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VIVE LA FRANCE
-c I..
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Vi\ i-, LA I-RANCI-
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M)| R I'OW! I i
M»A.J tLi.ANi). U.K/iAHh,D AM)
SiEWAR I It.)
VIVE LA FRANCE
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
Author oi ■' /'i^hliti; m HivUr;," d.
ILLUSTkATKU
TORONTO
McClelland, goodchild and
stewart ltd.
rrinltd in Ent^land
TO
FRANCE
W Hi'SK COIK.\i;K, sEKKMTV, ASl'
^ACRIllCE^, IN A CONFLICT WHICH
SHE I)II> NOTHING TO IKOVOKR, HA\ K
WON HRK THE SYMPATHY. RESIECT
AMI ADMIRATION OKTHK \VOKI.l>
I
I
i^'i»>«"f -iM^^eefeftiiMPSfiJmP^
^N ACKNOWLEDGMENT
F^OR the assistance they have given me,
and for the innumerable kindnesses
they have shown me, I welcome this
opportunity of expressing my thanks and ap-
preciation to his Excellency Jean Adricn
Antoine Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to
the United States ; to Lord Northchffe, owner
of the Jinti's and the Daily Mail ; to Ralph
Pulitzer, Esq., president, and C. M. Lincoln,
Esq., managing editor, of the New York I'Vorld ;
to Major-Gcneral Ryerson, of the Canadian
Overseas Contingent ; to Captain Count
Gerard de Ganay, who was my companion from
end to end of the Western battle-line ; to Messrs.
Ponsot, Alexis Leger, and Henri Hoppenot, of
the Bureau de la Presse ; to Licutcnant-'^?olonel
Spencer Cosby, military attache of the American
l",mbassy in Paris; to Captain John VV. Barker,
of the American
litary
Bsion
vu
viu
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
to Honourable Walter V. R. Berry ; to
Charles Prince, Esq., Herbert Corey, Esq.,
Lincoln Eyre, Esq., and William Philip Simms,
tsq., who on a score of occasions have proved
themselves my friends ; and finally to fame.
Ha.en Hyde, Esq., whose kindness I can never
fully repay. To each of these gentlemen I owe
a debt of gratitude which I shall not forget
K. ALEXANDER POWKLL
H('rEL HE Crillon, Paris
to
1-
IS,
id
es
7C
CONTENTS
CHAF I I :
AN ACKNOWLliDGMF.NT
I. IN THK FIELD WITH THE FRKNCI
II. ON THK BRITISH BA'rrLF.-LINE
III. THK RKTAKING OF ALSACK
IV. CAMPAIGNING IN THE \OSGES
V. THE FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE
\I. THE CONFLICT IN THK CLOUDS
\II. THE RED BADGE OF MERCY
HA(.B
vii
56
97
120
•S3
189
214
IX
» *7lil*i"^.?
jOm
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
... . ftjm.< f
" High-cxplosivc : " /n'd/i !/«>4<-
Fremh trcnchci in the sand-dunes ot the Belgian
littjral A
The watcii on the Aisne 5
The takini' (if N'cuvillc St, V'a.i^t. Frcmh infantry
ciig.i-t\i 11 iiou^c-to-iiou c ligliting 12
h'rciu li infantry ,i;oing into attiun
Frcnt h 1 ; vniiiUnutrc gun hc'ling the (jcrman
irciu li!.s on ttic Ai^ne
Frcntii artillery oii-cers in an observatory on the
Ai lie, waKiiiH'^' the cficLl of shell lire on the
(jcrman trenches
'I'hc I aves .t. ! ir-.ttn;-. in the (:'"- along the Ai^nc
arc uiili/.cd Icr iir t aid are ng stations 30
Zouaves carr} :ne a (jcrnmn pobi:i(jn in th.c Belgian
sand diinc^ by -torm ^ I
In the Argonnc 38
An observing officer directing the fire of a French
battery three miles behind him 39
German dead lying in front of the French trenches
on the shores of the North Sea 46
xi
18
«9
xii LIbT OK ILLUSTRATIONS
The Cathedral, Soi\son5
Th- Mass before the battle
^V'!:.u a rs'.cntimctrc .hcll, fired from a gun
tweMty.thrcc„ulesavvay,d,di„I).„k,rk ^
motor-buses ui war-coats of el-rhant ,.r,.,
;,;""■"■■' "■■!-"--"-i ™o .1'; •
'"K toward the trcnJic " '
Bnii-h fidj-kitchcn, on the march i„ Flanders
titrmans precede their attack,
A linti.h hatiery in action
"''t;i^^;s„:;;;:^H"^'--'.-i^thew.re
•' Imagine what it mu.t be like to sleep in a hole in
he earth ,nto which you have to crawl on a
'"urs.hkc an animal into lu lair"
'""reni.t:''^'"'"'''' '""''"^ - ^^^ German
"" "tTctfe'; ''°'° °' ^ ^'^"P"'^' ^'^^"- P--h
French trenches on the Somme
In the French trenches on :nc Yscr
Campaigning in the Vosges
What the Germans did to the church at Ribecourt
On the summit of the V'osges
47
>4
(>;
86
86
87
98
99
100
101
106
10-
^'4
5 3
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Zouave creeping out to a listening-post in front of
the trenches near Nicuport
The "traggling columns of unkempt unshaven men
were in striking contrast to the hclmcted giants
on gigantic horses who guarded them
In the trenches in Alsace
1, Convoy of German prisoners guarded by Moroccan
Spa his
M German communication trench captured by the
* French
"In this war the hand-grenade is King. Reside it
the high-power rifle is a 'oke "
"Movable entanglement? arc constructed in the
shelter of the trenches and pushed over the
parapet with p )les so that the men do not have
to expose themselves "
"When the poison-gas comes rolling down upon the
trenches the soldiers fasten over the mouth
and nostrils a pad of gauze saturated in a hypo-
sulphate solution "
The battlefield of Champagne
Bringing in the wounded during the battle of Cham-
pagne
German officers captured during the battle of Cham-
pagne
Tne effect of shrapnel from a Frem h " 5i.vcnt/-!ivc ''
on a German battery
Battle of Champagne. The German trenchc; a'ter
the firing ot the French artillery
Xlll
136
'37
140
141
150
15'
•5+
'55
'55
158
'59
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Tlie battio <,.' C(ijin|u«nc
Ifowtlul-nn,!. nK!:,,.rsf.,u:ul,hc(;crm..n,rc>,.lc>
''"r.i,;^ the battle in Ciumpagiic
■riu.. rater, cvcnty kct <!r-p and t«uc ti.r „,
d...,„.,:t.,r. „..s .,u,,.J l-v tf'.t .xpi.Mun .„•.,
>"'ru. In the t-rr.(ic b;.,-t live i.unJrcJ licr-
man, prpi hd
Thcp-r- Mpo r,n- :r. ti, • trcnclic,
All iron, I.id !>,:•, !i uirrct
Awo,KJvvl,cic,(...nn.,ntrfn,l, vv.u -heh.rcJ and
r.i/.cd by the French "7^ "
French s„kl,,.r. cutmg ..fK trnu-cr. b.tt-m. ,.
e.c-rm,u, pr; ..ner. tu prevent them c...,p n^
The thou..„J, upon thou aiui, of- cmpiv bra,, ,heli.
cases w.thvvh.ch the hattIct,e!J, arc .rc.n are
colcc.cd and .cr,t ba. k to the Uaory fo'
reloading •'
Mounted on the (icrman trench-wai:s were rcv.Iv-
mg ^teel turrets containing quuk-Mring ^un,
"Bronn-faced men from North Africa in turban >
and burnouses
Motor.buses with wire-netting tops filled with
carrier pigeoni
German prisoner, came by, carrvin^ on their
snoulders stretcher, on which lay the .t,ff. stark
form, of dead men
"Men were at u.^k rolling up the barbed wire in
the ., ipturcd German entanglement- ''
Fighting in a auarrel that i. not his own
166
16-
'-4
I --
ISO
1S2
IS;
I >,-
192
-K?^-^^
^^i^sia^ms^^m^w
LIST OK ILLUSTRATIONS
XV
The hr I iiiic- (lenn.m trctul\c> cipturcJ by the
hrLii>^h iti Cham[UKnc ii/<
A jcctiuii ut machine fc;un> pa-iinj; through the
booty taken from the Gcrm.in- lo
French .i-v i r rult ^ .n in action a^.tnut a German
acropianc 201
When the iliiikeni conic home f ■ roci-t 20^
Antij:ri.r.i:i ^uni, piMtcJ i)utoi.lc the town-, arc
re.ijy to give a warm reception lo an aerial
intruder 107
ArtoM. The uiulerjjround beJroom of the French
hc.ivy artillery otfii cr :?6
"Two s()l,!u:ri lifted him tm to ,i -.trctcher and
carried him between interminable wall> ot
brown e^rth to the drc:i>ing->tation *' z^6
Unloading wounded at a hospital in Northern France 2^7
Red Cro'is men getting wounded out ot a bombarded
town in Flander:> 244
Bringing in the harvest ot the guns 245
•' Every hou-c and farmyard tor miles around was
filled with wounded, and still they came
streaming in " 2>o
" The paths of glory lead — "
2;i
9^mm
;^: 1
,v 'J
I. IN THE FIELD WITH
THE FRENCH
BEFORE going to France I was told
that the French were very stingy
with their war. I was told that the
(nily fighting I would be permitted to see
^ would be on moving-picture screens. I was
assured that war correspondents were about as
welcome as the small-pox. But I found that
I had been misinformed. So far as I am con-
cerned they have been as generous with their
war a-^ a Kentucky colonel is with mint-juleps.
Tluy have, in fact, been so willing to let me
get close up to where things were happening
that, on one or two occasions, it looked as
though I would never sje the Statue of
Liberty again. I do not wish to give the im-
pression, however, that these facilities for
flirting with sudden death are handed out
promiscuously to all who apply for them. To
obtain me permission to see the French fight-
ing-machine in action required the united
influence of three Cabinet Ministers, a British
I A
2 VIVE LA FRANCE !
peer, two ambassadors, a score of newspapers
— and the patience of Job.
Unless you have attempted to pierce it, it
is impossible to comprehend the marvellous
veil of secrecy which the Allied Governments
have cast over their military operations. I
wonder if you, who will read this, realize that,
though the German trenches can be reached
by motor-car in ninety minutes from the Rue
de la Paix, it is as impossible for an unauthor-
ized person to get within sound, much less
within sight, of them as it would be for a
tourist to stroll into Buckingham Palace and
have a friendly chat with King George. The
good old days in Belgium, when the corre-
spondents went flitting light-heartedly about
the zone of operations on bicycles and in taxi-
cabs and motor-cars, have passed, never to
return. Imagine a battle in which more men
were engaged and the results of which were
more momentous than Waterloo, Gettysburg,
and Sedan combined — a battle in which Europe
lost more men than the North lost in the
whole of the Civil War — being fought at, let
us say, Manchester, in December, rind the
people of London and Edinburgh not knowing
IN THE FIELD 3
the details of that battle, the names of the
regiments engaged, the losses, or, indeed, the
actual result, until the following March. It
is, in fact, not the slightest exaggeration to
say that the people of Europe knew more about
the wars that were fought on the South African
veldt and on the Manchurian steppes than they
do about this, the greatest of all wars, which is
being fought literally at their front doors. So
that when a correspondent does succeed in
pcner aiing the veil of mystery, when he
obtains permission to see with his own eyes
something of what is happening on that five-
hundred-mile-long slaughter-house and cess-
pool combined which is called " the front," he
has every excuse for self-congratulation.
When the Ministry of War had reluctantly
issued me the little yellow card, with my
photograph pasted on it, which, so far as this
war is concerned, is the equivalent of Aladdin's
lamp and the magic carpet put together, and I
had become for the time being the guest of the
nation, my path was everywhere made smooth
before me. I was ciceroncd by a staff-officer
in a beautiful sky-blue uniform, and other
officers were waiting to explain things to me
4 VIVE LA FRANCE !
in the various divisions through which wc
passed. Wc travelled by motor-car, with a
pilot-car ahead and a luggage-car behind,
and we went so fast that it took two people to
tell about it, one to shout " Here they come ! "
and another, " There they fo ! "
Leaving Paris, white and beautiful in the
spring sunshine, behind us, we tore down the
historic highway which sti.l bears the title
of the Route de Flandre, down which count-
less thousands of other men had hastened, in
bygone centuries, to the fighting in the north.
The houses of the city thinned and disappeared,
and we came to open fields across which writhed,
like monstrous yellow serpents, the zigzag lines
of trenches. The whole countryside from the
Aisne straight away to the walls of Paris is
one vast network of trenches and barbed-wire
entanglements, and, even in the improbable
event of the enemy breaking through the
present line, he would be little better off than
he was before. The fields between the trenches
were being ploughed by women, driving sleek
white oxen, but the furrows were scarcely
ever straight, for every few yards they would
turn aside to avoid a turf-covered mound
Frciich trciiche- in the s.uiJ-diim;-^ i)t the H.-lui <ti Iittor.il
■ ■■ !■.;• - tl it f.lir-ll : :,.I|..i-|lll't -'rll^ liill' .,f t!r-Ul lll-^ will. !l ^!lt-| .
bH< >|..- III., a m .u^U..:,- .,-.\ .!.-.,.!l\ - -...kr
i
ii
*-v^ - ■•-•••
te^i
IN THE FIKLD
5
:-urmounted by a rudL- cross and a scarlet kepi.
I-"wr lialf a hundred miles this portion of France
i> one vast cemetery, for it was here that von
Kluek made his desperate attempt to break
through to Paris, and it was here that JofFre,
ill the greatest battle of all tmic, drove the
(icrman legions back across the Marne and
ended their dream of entering the French
capital. We whirled through villages whose
main streets are lined with the broken, black-
ened shells of what had once been shops and
dvyellings. At once I felt at home, for with
this sort of thing I had grown only too familiar
in Belgium during the earlier days of the war.
But here the Germans were either careless
or in a hurry, for they had left many buildings
standing. In Belgium they made a more
finished job of it. Nothing better illustrates
the implicit confidence which the French
people have in their army, and in its ultimate
success, than the fact that in all these towns
through which we passed the people were
hard at work rebuilding their shattered homes,
though the strokes of their hammers were
echoed by the sullen boom of German cannon.
To me there was something approaching the
jr
6 VIVE LA FRANCE !
sublime in these impoverished peasants turn-
ing with stout hearts and smiling faces to the
rebuilding of their homes and the refilling
of their fields. To these patient, toilvvorn
men and women I lift my hat in respect and
admiration. They, no less than their sons
and husbands and brothers in the trenches,
arc fighting the battles of France.
As we approached the front the traditional
brick-red trousers and kepis still worn by the
second-line men gave way to the new uniform
of silvery blue— the colour of early morning.
There were soldiers everywhere. Every town
and hamlet through which we passed was alive
with them. The highways were choked with
troops of all arms ; cuirassiers, with their
mediaeval steel helmets and breastplates liucn-
covercd ; dragoons, riding under thickets
of gleaming lances ; zouaves in short blue
jackets and baggy red breeches ; spahis in
turbans and Senegalese in tarbooshes and
AToroccans in burnouses ; chasseurs d'Afrique
in sky-blue and scarlet ; infantry of the line
in all the shades of blue that can be pro-
duced by dyes and by the weather ; mile-long
strings of motor transports ; field batteries ; pon-
\V
IN THE FIELD 7
toon trains ; balloon corps ; ambulances with
staring scarlet crosses painted on their canvas
covers— all the nuts and bolts and springs
and screws which go to compose what has
become, after months of testing and improve-
ments, as efficient a killing machine as the
world has ever seen. And it is, I am convinced,
eventually going to do the business. It struck
me as having all, or nearly all, of the merits
of the German organization with the human
element added.
When only a short distance in the rear of the
firing-line we left the car and proceeded on foot
down a winding country road which debouched
quite suddenly into a great, saucer-shaped
valley. Its gentle slopes were chequered with
the brown squares of fresh-ploughed fields
and the green ones of sprouting grain. From
beyond a near-by bridge came the mutter of
artillery, and every now and then there ap-
peared against the turquoise sky what looked
like a patch of cotton-wool but was in reality
bursting shrapnel. The far end of the valley
was filled with what appeared at first glance
to be a low-hanging cloud of grey-blue mist,
but which, as we drew nearer, resolvea itself
8
VIVE LA FRANCE !
into dense masses of troops drawn up in review
formation— infantry at the left, cavalry at the
right, and guns in the centre. I had heard
much of the invisible qualities of the new field
uniform of the French Army, but I had licre-
t(;fore believed it to be greatly inferi(jr to the
(German greenish grey. But I liave changed
my mind. At three hundred yards twenty
thousand men could scarcely be distinguishable
fr(jm the landscape. The only colourful note
was struck by the dragoons, who still retain
their suicidal uniform of scarlet breeches,
blue tunic, and the helmet with its horse-tail
plume, though a concession has been made to
practicality by covering the latter with tan
linen. The majority of the French woollen
mills being in the region held by the Germans,
It has been possible to provide only a portion
of the army with the new uniform. As a
result of this shortage of cloth, thousands of
soldiers have had recourse to the loose corduroy
trousers common among the peasantry, while
for the territorials almost any sort of a jacket
will pass muster provided it is of a neutral
colour and has the regimental numerals on the
collar. Those soldiers who can afford to
I'-^S^^^^^^T
-^■.'^ I riA'-'c.-r'\'!>,.'^- •••)»,
^OtMO^SBl
&".,,♦ '*f,r
IN THE FIELD 9
provide their own uniforms almost invariably
have them made of khaki, cut after the more
practical British pattern, with cap-covers of
the same material. Owing to this latitude in
the matter of clothing, the French army during
the fir^t yiar ui the war presented an extra-
ordinarily variegated and nondescript appear-
ance, though this lack of uniformity is gradually
h<-ing remedied.
At three o'clock a rolling cloud of dust
>udde Illy appeared on the road from Com piegne,
and out of it tore a long line of mUitary cars,
travelling at express-train speed. All save one
were in war coats of elephant grey. The ex-
ception was a low-slung racer painted a canary-
yellow. Tearing at top speed up the valley,
It came to a sudden stop before the centre of
the mile-long line of soldiery. A mile of
fighting men stiffened to attention; a mile
of rifle barrels formed a hedge of burnished
steel ; the drums gave the long roll and the
thirteen ruffles ; the colours swept the ground ;
the massed bands burst into the splendid
strains of the Marseillaise, and a little man,
grcy-moustached, grey-bearded, inclined to
stoutness, but with the unmistakable carriage
10 VIVE LA FRANCE !
of a soldier, descended from the yellow car
and, followed by a staff in uniforms of light
blue, of dark blue, of tan, of green, of scarlet,
walked briskly down the motionless lines. I
was having tlie unique privilege of seeing a
President of France reviewing a French army
almost within sight of the invader and actu-
ally within sound of his guns. It was under
almost parallel circumstances that, upward of
half a century ago, on the banks of the Rappa-
hannock, another President of another mighty
republic reviewed another army, which was
likewise fighting the battles of civilization.
Raymond Poincare is by no means an easy
man to describe. He is the only French
President within my memory who hjcjks the
part of ruler. In his person arc centred, as it
were, the aspirations of France, for he is a
native of Lorraine. He was a capiain of
Alpine Chasseurs in his younger days and shows
the result of his military training in his erect
and vigorous bearing. Were you to sec him
apart from his official surroundings you might
well take him, with his air of energy and
authority, iox a great employer or a captain
of industry. Take twenty years from the age
i-
o
IN THE FIELD n
f AnJrcw Carnegie, trim his beard to a point,
throw his shoulders back and his chest out, and
you will have as good an idea as I can give you
of the war-time President of France.
At the President's right walked a thick-set,
black-moustached man whose rather shabby
blue serge suit and broad-brimmed black slouch
hat were in strange contrast to the brilliant
uniforms about him. Yet this man in the
wrinkled suit, with the unmilitary bearing,
exercised more power than the President and
all the officers who followed him ; a word
irom him could make or break generals, could
move armies ; he was Millerand, War Minister
of France.
After passing down the lines and making a
minute inspection of the soldiers and their
equipment, the President took his stand in
iront of the grouped standards, an.^ the
officers and men who were to be decorated
fur gallantry ranged themselves before liim,
some with bandaged heads, some with their
arms in slings, one hobbling painfully along
on crutches. Stepping forward, as the Minister
of War read off their names from a list, the
Prsidcnt pinned to the tunic of each man
imBS^iPir'..,xi:4.WL*^i ' ' .s,-uMSZJS-siPS£ii
12 VIVE LA FRANCE!
the coveted bit of ribbon and enamel and
kissed him on cither cheek, wliile the troops
presented arms and the massed bands played
the anthem. On general principles I should
think that the President would rebel at having
to kiss so many men, even though they are
heroes and have been freshly shaved {(^r the
occasion.
1 migJit mention in passing that the decora-
lion mo^t highly prized by t]ie French soldier
i- not, as is popularly supposed, the Legion
of Honour, which, like the Iron Cross, has
greatlv depreciated because of its wholesale
distribution (it is the policy of the (lerman
military authorities, I believe, to give the
Iron Cross to one in every twenty men), but
the Medaille Militaire, which, like the Victori;.
Cross and the Prussian decoration. Pour le
Merite. is awarded only for deeds of the most
conspicuous bravery. The Medaillc Militaire,
moreover, can be won only by privates and
non-commissioned officers or by generals,
though the Croix de Guerre, the little bronze
cross which signifies that the wearer has been
mentioned in despatches, is awarded to all
ranks and occasionally to women, among the
,i,
'^iLOrifr^'y^Si:' ..'i^^\4.-.''
■ I ',r'-± ' ^fy^^'
■:/'.s,-,h: • ■^i^-X^- 'i'
^^^^^^^m^^^'
'4^^;- s^-iiLwi
KiciK li int.mtry ^oin^ into action
" I lie- "■ic ill- Ian; 11 /,.... 111.; l.-iiilcii ■n. ■-, ih. in.ii "ill. Ii.iir mii
ilieii ■ hesl , m ivri^'. I ui ..I 4''\ i-li ''!"t^ U'^i'i ''"'"'"•; ^I'immt ■ um,
slar.tiiiL I.'..- ..f -I'-c!.
\S
LN THE FIELD
13
dicoTces being Madame Alexis Carrel, the wife
of the famous Si rgeon.
The picturesque business of recognizing the
brave being concluded, the review of the troops
began. Topping a rise, they swept down upon
us in line of column — a moving cloud of greyish
blue under shifting, shimmering, slanting lines
of steel. Company after company, regiment
after regiment, brigade after brigade, swept
past, businesslike as a locomotive, implacable
as a trip-hammer, irresistible as a steam-roller,
moving with mechanical precision to the
exultant strains of the march of the Sambre
ct Meusc. These were the famous foilus, the
bearded ones, the men with hair on their
chests. Their uniforms were not immaculate.
They were faded by wind and rain and some-
times stained with blood. On their boots was
the mud of the battle-fields along the Aisne.
Fresh from the tt'^.nches though they were,
they were as pink-cheeked as athletes, and
they marched with the buoyancy of men in
high spirits and in perfect health. Here
before me was a section of that wall of steel
which stands unbroken between Western
Europe and the Teutonic hordes. Hard on
J
14 VIVE LA FRANCE !
the heels of the infantry came the guns —
the famous " 75's "—a dozen batteries, well
horsed and well equipped, at a spanking trot.
A little space to let the foot and guns get out
of the way, and then we heard the wild, shrill
clangour of the cavalry trumpets pealing the
charge. Over the rise they came, hclractcd
giants on gigantic horses. The earth shook
beneath their gallop. The scarlet breeches
of the riders gleamed fiery in the sunlight ; the
horsehair plumes of the helmets floated out
behind ; the upraised sword-blades formed a
forest of glistening steel. As they went
thundering past us in a whirlwind of dust and
colour they rose in their stirrups, and high above
the clank of steel and the trample of hoofs
came the deep-mouthed Gallic battle-cry :
" Vive la France ! Five la France ! "
To have had a battery of French artillery
go into action and pour a torrent of steel-cased
death upon the enemy's trenches for one's
special benefit is, so far as I am aware, a cour-
tesy which the General Staff has seen fit to
extend to no other correspondent. That the
guns were of the new 105-millimetre model,
which are claimed to be as much superior to
-■». i^ -iHKIM "iw»l^rj?»iffi
IN THE FIELD
15
the " 75's " as the latter are to all other field
artillery, made the exhibition all the more
interesting. The road which we had to take
in order to reach this particular battery leads
for several miles across an open plateau within
full view of the German positions. As we
approached this danger zone the staflF-officer
who accompanied me spoke to our driver,
who opened up the throttle, and we took that
stretch of exposed highway as a frightened cat
takes the top of a backyard fence. " Merely a
matter of precaution," explained my com-
panion. " Sometimes when the Germans see
a car travelling along this road they send a few
shells across in the hope of getting a general,
there's no use in taking unnecessary chances."
Though I didn't say so, it struck me that I was
in c(msiderably more danger from the driving
than I was from a German shell.
Leaving the car in the shelter of the ridge
on which the battery was posted, we ascended
the steep hillside on foot. I noticed that the
slope we were traversing was pitted with
miniature craters, any one of which was large
enough to hold a barrel. " It might be as
well to hurry across here," the artillery officer
'^M9^jtrmV'^'s^':4jis^i»SM:.'^st:
,6 VIVE LA FRANCE !
who was acting as our guide casually remark, d
"Last evening the Germans dropped eight
hundred shells on this field that we are cross-
ing, and one never knows, of course, when they
will do it again." i , ,„
Part way up the slope we entered what ap-
peared to be a considerable grove of young
Irees. Upon closer inspection, however I
discovered that it was not a natural grove but
an artificial one, hundreds of saplmgs having
been brought from elsewhere and set upright
in the ground. Soon I saw the reason, for m
a little cleared space in the heart of this imita-
tion wood, mounted on what looked not unl.ke
gigantic step-ladders, were two field-gun
with their muzzles pointing skyward. VU^c
guns are for use against aircraft," explained the
officer in charge. " The German airmen are
constantly trying to locate our batteries, and
Torder' to'discourage their inquisit.veness
w-'ve put these guns in position." The guns
were of the regulation ,oi..»Ujinz> pattern
but so elevated that the wheds were at the
height of a man's head from the ground, the
barrels thus being inclined at such an acute
angle that, by means of a sort of turntable oa
IN THE FIELD 17
which the platforms were mounted, the gunners
were able to sweep the sky. " This," said the
artillery officer, calling my attention to a
curious-looking instrument, " is the telemeter.
By means of it v/e arc able to obtain the exact
altitude oi the aircraft at which we are firing,
and thus know at what elevation to set our
guns. It is as simple as it is ingenious. There
are two apertures, one for each eye. In one
the aircraft is seen right side up ; in the other
it is inverted. By turning this thumbscrew
the images are brought together. When one
IS superimposed exactly over the other the
altitude is shown in metres on this dial below.
Then we open on the airman with shrapnel."
Since these guns were placed in position the
German air-scouts have found it extremely
hazardous to play peep-a-boo from the clouds.
A few minutes walk along the ridge brought
us to the battery of 105's, which was the real
object of our visit. The guns were not posted
on the summit of the ridge, as a layman might
suppose, but a quarter of a mile behmd it,
so that the ridge itself, a dense forest, and the
river Aisne intervened between the battery
and the German position. The guns were
B
m
III' i|l'i|i I I" ilil IIP Iijili'l WlihiPMIiMNI iimiiiMlf ^1 A
,« VIVE LA FRANCE!
.1,. matlrd with shrubs
unk in ri:s so ingeniously mafkcawi^
.unk 1 ' ^ Wrenest-cycd airman,
ind branches that the Keenest tj
' . ,, 1 „„uld have seen nothing
living <>w overhead, wouia nay
to !r<.use his suspicions. Fifty feet away one
Jd detect nclhing about that apparent y
Cocent clump of tangled vegetation o
rggest that it concealed an amazing quant y
^potential death. This battery had be n
Ire through the winter, and the gunner, had
'Led tht time, which hung heavy on .l^r
,„d, i„ making themselves comfort^bh . d
• U .uuhm^ their surroundings. V\iUi t k
m bcauutv n^ mc ,u.,,.,,tcr\n\c d the
taste and ingenuity so char.acru
.•>cncl . they had -ns^mc^ he .^^ry
,,„,,, ,v..n «7"',/t^,bv deftly
,he gun-pits we, c kept in r ^^
„.„ven wattles and tht patns ^
,Hem had borders of « ^^Xt-d pe ^le .
were ratri.aic mottoes in coiourca i
were jaiti ^ ,„;on<:1v constructed
Scattered about were ingeniousU con
bcattcrcu ^^.^^^.^ ^^^ j^.^., ^.^
rustic scats and table.. j.vacinths
one of the great grey guns a bed ot ^
J ^Un nr heavy w th their fragrance,
■"/t-ptvs' banked about «th ye low
" „ Han ino from the arbour which shielded
crocub. liangiu,>,i „.o KT^Vets niade
another of the steel monsters were baskets
■ i CV.M-:f,|lE'^v'-' ' ./l:\^..^J-
..■•>•■ ■#*:'i?;
Msmmm^iu3mM.3i^
c<|gii^l>^3:?^Bf* -T^v'L'cy.-
^is:^
'■^^ssTMVEH^^BarsiiBSsrtiimEitiii
IN THE MlXl)
•9
of mos. and b;irk, in wluch were Krowing
violet.. At a rustic table, under a sort of
per-ola, a soldier was pointing a picture m
wat'^er-colours. It was a Kood picture I saw
it afterward on exhibition in the Salon de.
Humoristes in Paris. A few yards bc-hind
each Run-emplaccmcnt were cave-like shelters,
dug in the hillside, in which the men ^leep,
and in which they take refuge dunng the
periodic shell-storms which visit thein. I hose
into which I went were warm and dry and not
■a all uncomfortable. Over the entrance to
one of these troglodyte dwellings wa< a sign
announcing that it was the Villa des Roses.
- Do the Germans know the position ot
t>>esc guns ? " I asked the battery com-
mander.
" Not exactly, though they have, of course,
a pretty general idea."
"Then you are not troubled by German
shells," 1 remarked.
- Indeed we arc," was the answer. Thougli
ihcy have not been able to locate us exactly,
they know that we are somewhere at the back
o^- this ridge, so every now and then they
attempt to clear us out by means of progressive
^ii^B^UKpg^jns^s^m^-^mMPirj^xsLvxmn f^r.ivnssc-v^^
20 VIVF. l.A FRANCE !
ftrc. That is. they start in at the summit,
and by Kfadually increasing tlie elevation of
their Runs, systematically sweep the entire
reverse .lope of the ridge, so that some of their
shells are almost certain to drop in on us. Do
vou appreciate, however, that, though we have
now been in this .ame position for nearly six
months, though not a day goes by that we are
not under fire, and though a number ot my
men have been killed and wounded, wc have
never seen the target at which wc are firing
and we have never seen a German soldier ?
\ ten-minute walk across the open table-
land which lay in front of the battery, and
which forms the summit of the ridgc, then
through a dense bit of forest, and wc found
ourselves at the entrance to one of those secret
obsffvatotres from which the French observers
keep an unceasing watch on the movements of
the enemy, and by means of telephones, con-
trol the fire of their own batteries with in-
credible accuracy. This particular observatotu
occupied the mouth of a cave on the precipi-
tous hillside above the Aisne, being rendered
invisible by a cleverly arranged screen of
bushes. Pinned to the earthen walls were
IN THE FIELD
21
contour maps and fire-control charts ; power-
ful telescopes mounted on tripods brought the
German trenches across the river so close to us
that, had a German soldier being incautious
enough to show himself, we could almost have
seen the spike upon his helmet ; and a military
telephonist with receivers clamped to his cars
sat at a switchboard and pushed buttons or
pulled out pegs just as the telephone girls do
in London hotels. The chief diflercnce was
that this operator, instead of ordering a bell-
hop to take ice-water and writing-paper to
Room 511, would tell the commander of a
battery, four or five or six miles away, to send
over to a Cicrman trench, which he would
designate by number, a few rounds of shrapnel
or high explosive.
An officer in a smart uniform of dark
blue with the scarlet facings of the artillery
beckoned to me to come forward, and indicated
a small opening in the screen of branches.
" Look through there," he said, " but please
be extremely careful not to show yourself or
to shake the branches. That hillside opposite
us is dotted with the enemy's observatoires.
just as this hillside is dotted with ours, and
^2 VIVE LA FRANCE!
they arc constantly sweeping this ridge with
powerful glasses in the hope of spotting us
and shelling us out. Thus far they've not
been able to locate us. We've had better luck,
however. We've located two of their fire-
conirol stations, and put them out of business."
As 1 was by no means anxious to have a
storm of shrapnel bursting about my head,
1 was careful not tr- do anything whicli might
attract the attention of a German with a
telescope glued to his eye. Peering cautiously
through the opening in the screen of bushes,
1 l^nd myself looking down upon the winding
course of the Aisne ; to the south-west
I could catch a glimpse of the pottery
roofs of Soissons, while from the farther bank
of the river rose the gentle slopes which
formed the opposite side of the river valley.
These slopes were everywhere slashed and
scarred by zigzag lines of yellow which 1 knew
to be the German trenches. But, though I
knew that those trenches sheltered an invadhig
army, -ot a sign of life was to be seen. Barring
a few black-and-white cows grazing contentedly
in a pasture, the landscape was absolutely de-
serted. There was something strangely oppres-
IN THE FIELD
23
sivc and uncanny about this great stretch of
fertile Countryside, dotted here and there
with wbite-walled cottages and clumps of
farm buildings, but with not a single human
being to be seen. On the other side of the
opposit • ridge I knew that the German
batteries were posted, just as tlie French guns
were stationed out of sight at the back of the
ridge on which I stood. This artillery war-
fare It, after all, only a gigantic edition of the
old-fashioned game of hide-and-seek ; the
chief difference being iliat when you catch
jight of your opponent, instead of saying
politely, " I see you ! " you try to kill him
with a three-inch shell.
A soldier set a tripod in position and on it
carefully adjusted a powerful telesctjpe. The
colonel motioned me to look through it, and
suddenly the things that had looked like
sinuous yellow lines became recognizable as
marvellously constructed earthworks.
" Now," said the colonel, '' focus your glass
on that trench just above the ruined farm-
house and I will show you what our gunners
can do." After consulting a chart with
innumerable radiating blue and scarlet lines
24
VIVE LA FRANCE !
which was pinned to a drafting-table, and
making seme hasty calculations with a pencil,
he gave a few curt orders to a junior officer who
sat at a telephone switchboard with receivers
clamped to his ears. The young officer spoke
some cabalistic figures into the transmitter
and concluded with the order : " Ti> rapide.""
" Now, Monsieur Powell," called the colonel,
" watch the trenches." A moment later,
from somewhere behind the ridge at the back
of us, came in rapid succession six splitting
crashes — bang! bang! bang! bang! bang! bang!
A fraction of a second later I saw six puflFs of
black smoke suddenly appear against one of
the yellow lines on the distant hillside ; six
fountains of earth shot high into the air.
" Right into the trenches ! " exclaimed the
colonel, who was kneeling beside -ne with his
glasses glued to his eyes. " Watch once more."
Again six splitting crashes, six distant puffs of
smoke, and, floating back to us a moment later,
six muffled detonations.
" The battery that has just fired is four miles
from those trenches," remarked the colonel
casually. " Not so bad, eh ? "
" It's marvellous," I answered, but all the
IN THE FIELD
i
i
I
I
i
time I was wondering how many lives had been
snuffed out for my benefit that morning on
the distant hillside, how many men with
whom I have no quarrel had been maimed for
life, how many women had been left husband-
less, how many children fatherless.
" I do not wish to hasten your departure,
Monsieur Powell," apologized the colonel,
" but if you wish to get back to your car
without annoyance, I think that you had better
be starting. We've stirred up the Boches, and
at any moment now their guns may begin
to answer."
He knew what he was talking about, did that
colonel. In fact, we had delayed our depar-
ture too long, for just as we reached the edge
of the wood, and started across the open
plateau which crowns the summit, something
hurtled through the air above the tree-tops
with a sound between a moan and a snarl and
exploded with a crash like a thousand cannon
crackers set off together a few yards in front
of us. Before the echoes of the first had time
to die away came another and yet another.
They burst to the right of us, to the left of us,
seemingly all around us. We certainly had
^
T
26
VIVE LA FRANCE 1
stirred up the (Germans. For a few minutes
we were in a very warm corner, and I am no
stranucr to ,-holl-firc, citlier. At first we de-
cided to make a d.isli fur it across tlie plateau,
but a slicll whieh hurst in the undergrowth
not tliirty feet ahead induced us to chaiii^e our
minds, and we precipitately retreated to the
nearest bomb-proof. 'Fhc next half-hour we
spent snugly and securely several feet below
the surface of the earth, while shrapnel
whined overhead like bloodliounds seeking
their prey. Have you ever heard shrapnel by
an)- chance ? No ? Well, it sounds as much
as anything else like a winter gale howling
through the branches of a pine-tree. It is a
moan, a groan, a shriek, and a wail rolled into
one, and when the explosion comes it sounds
as though some one had touched off a stick of
dynamite under a grand piano. And it is not
particularly cheering to Inow that the ones
you hear do not harm you, and that it is the
ones you do not have time to hear that send
you to the cemetery. The French ^artillery
officers tell me that the German ammunition
has noticeably deteriorated of late. Well,
perhaps. Still, I hadn't noticcvlHt. It was
IN THE FIELD
27
thirty minutes before the storm of shrapnel
slackened and it was safe to start for the car.
Wc had a mile of open field to cross with shells
still (jccasionally falling. I felt like a man
wearing a silk hat who has just passed a gang
of boys engaged in making snowballs. In a life-
timclargely made up of interesting experiences
that exlxibition of French gunnery will always
stand out as one of the most interesting things
I have ever se-^n. But all the way back to
headquarters I kept wondering about those
men in the trenches where the shells had
fallen, and about the women and children who
are waiting and watching and praying for them
over there across the Rhine.
I had expressed a wish to visit Soissons,
and, upon communicating with division head-
quarters, permission was granted and the
necessary orders issued. Before we started,
however, I was told quite frankly that the
military authorities accepted no responsi-
bility for the consequences of the proposed
excursion, for, though the town was in the
possession of the French, it was under almost
constant bombardment by the Germans. In
order to get the setting of the picture clearly
%
1
28
VIVE LA FRANCE !
/!
in your mind, you must picture two parallel
ranges of hills, separated by a wonderfully
fertile valley, perhaps three miles in width,
down which meanders, with many twists and
hairpin turns, the silver ribbon which is the
Aisne. On its north bank, at a gentle bend in
the river, stands the quaint old town of Sois-
sons, so hoary with antiquity that its earlier
history is lost in the mists of tradition. Of
its normal population of fifteen thousand,
when I was there only a few score remained,
and those only because they had no other
place to go.
A sandstone ridge which rises abruptly
from the south bank of the river directly op-
posite Soissons was held by the French, and
from its shelter their batteries spat unceasing
defiance at the Germans, under General von
Heeringen, whose trenches lined the heights
on the other side of the river and immediately
behind the town. From dawn to dark and
often throughout the night, the screaming
messengers of death crisscrossed above the
red-tiled roofs of Soissons and served to make
things interesting for the handful of inhabi-
tants who remained. Every now and then the
IN THE FIELD
29
German gunners, apparently for no reason
save pure deviltry, would drop a few shells
into the middle of the town. They argued, no
doubt, that it would keep the townsfolk from
becoming ennuied and give them something to
occupv their minds.
The ridge on the French side of the river is
literally honeycombed with quarries, tunnels,
and caverns, many of these subterranean cham-
bers being as large and as curiously formed
as the grottoes in the Mammoth Cave. Being
weatherproof as well as shell-proof, the French
had turned them to excellent account, utilizing
them for barracks, ammumtion stores, fire-
control stations, hospitals, and even stables.
In fact, I can recall few stranger sights than
that of a long Une of helmeted horsemen, com-
prising a whole squadron of dragoons, disap-
pearing into the mouth of one of these caverns
like a gigantic snake crawling into its lair.
Leaving the car three miles from the out-
skirts of Soissons, we made our way through
dense undergrowth up a hillside until we came
quite unexpectedly upon the yawning mouth
of a tunnel, which, I surmised, passed com-
pletely under the backbone of the ridge.
?■ wr^^
30
VIVE LA FRANCE
Groping our way for perhaps an eighth of
a mile through inky blackness, we suddenly
emerged, amid a blinding glare of sunlight,
into just such another observing station as we
had visited that morning farther up the Aisne.
This nhserz'atoire, being in the mouth of the
tunnel, could not be seen from above, while a
screen of branches and foliage concealed it
from the Gtrnian observers acro.-^s the river.
The officer in command at this point was
anxious to give us a demonstration of the ac-
curacy with which his gunners could land f)n the
German solar plexus, but when he learned that
wo were going into the town he changed his
mind.
" 'i'hey've been quiet all day," he explained,
" and if you are going across the river it's just
as well not to stir them up. You'll probably
get a little excitement in any event, for the
Boches usually shell the town for an hour or so
at sunset before knocking off for supper. We
call it ' The Evening Prayer.' "
S^ijping through an opening in the screen
of foliage which masked the observatnire, wc
found ourselves at the beginning of a boyau. or
communication trench, which led diagonally
''s .:. i^'t:?*!.- r. .■'\ ;.* i
n
f
I,
S
«■-: :.*... fi
IN THE FIELD
31
si
1
£-
cjjvn the face of the hillside to the river.
Down this we went, sometimes on hands and
knees and always stooping, for as long as wc
were on the side of the hill we were within sight
of the German positions, and to have shown
our heads above the trench would have at-
tracted the bullets of the German sharpshoot-
ers. And a second is long enough for a bullet
to do its business. Fimerging from the boyau
at the foot of the hill, we crossed the river by
an ancient stone bridge and for a mile or mf)rc
followed a cobble-paved high road which ran
between rows of workmen's cottages which
had been wrecked by shell-fire. Some had
blattered roofs and the plastered walls of
others were pockmarked with bullets, for here
the fi<,'hting had been desperate and bloody.
But over th • garden walls strayed blossom-
laden branches of cherry, peach, and apple
trees. The air was heavy with their fragrance.
Black-and-white cattle grazed contentedly
knee-deep in lush green grass. Pigeons cooed
and chattered on the housetops. By an open
window an old woman with a large whi e cat
in her lap sat knitting. As she knitted she
looked out across the blossoming hillsides to
il
U VIVE LA FRANCE!
the vkv-linc where the invaders lay i ntrcnchcd
and waiting. I wondered what she was think-
ing about. She must have remembered quite
distinctly when the Germans came to Soissons
tor the first time, five and forty years before,
and how they shot the townsmen in the public
square. A few years ago the people of Sois-
sons unveiled a monument to those murdered
citizens. When this war is over they will have
more names to add to those already carded on
its base.
It is not a cheerful business strolling through
a shell-shattered and deserted town. You
feel depressed and speak in hushed tones, as
though you were in a house that had been
visited by death as, indeed, you are. In the
Place de la Republique we found a score or so
of infantrymen on duty, these being the only
soldiers that we saw ill the town. Along the
main thoroughfares nearly every shop was
closed and its windows shuttered. Some tobac-
conists and two or three cafes remained bravely
open, but Httle business was being done. I do
not think that I am exaggerating when I say
that every fourth or fifth house we passed
showed evidences of the German bombard-
1
IN TIIK FIELD
33
nicnt. One shell, I remember, had exploded
in the show-window of a furniture store and
had ilemolished a ^It-and-red plush parlour
Hiit The only thing unharmed was a sign
uhieh read " Cheap and a bargain."
In tiie very lieart of Soissons stands the huge
bulk ».f the Miagnifiient twelfth century cathe-
dral, it.- in.i>-ive tower rising -kyward like a
finger pointing toward heav.n. 'I lure arc
tew iiobK r piK s in France. Repeated r.ippings
at a door in ilie churchyard wall brought the
'.vr. a white-haired, kindly faced giant of a
man. I iider his uidance we entered the
caihedr.d, or r.itlur what remains of it, for its
tainous (iothic windows are now but heaps of
-nattered gl.isj, the splendid nave is open to
tile Ay, luih t'le roof ii.i> been torn awav, the
pul}>it with it., excjuisite carvings has been
splintered by a slu 11. and the massive columns
have been chipp. d and scarred. Carvings
which were the pride of master craftsmen long
centuries dead have been damaged past repair.
In the fl(^or of the nave yawns a hole large
enough to hold a horse. Around the statues
which flank the altar, and which are too large
to move, have been raised barricades of sand-
c
f *
34
VI\'E LA FRA^
I
bags. And this, mind you, in tlic house of Him
who was the Apostle of Peace !
\\ hilc the curr was pointing out to us the
ruined beauties of his celebrated windows,
something passed overhead wth a wail like a
lost soul. A moment later came an explosion
which made the walls of the cathedral trem-
ble. " Ah," remarked the curr unconcernedly,
" they've begun again. I thought it must be
nearly time. They bombard the cathedral
every evening between five and seven."
As he finished speaking, another shell came
whining over the housetops and burst with a
prodigious racket in the street outside.
'' 1 low far away was that one ? " I asked one
of the officers.
" Only about a hundred metres," was the
careless reply.
As unmoved as though at a church supper,
the luri' placidly continued his recital of the
cathedral's departed glories, reeling off the
names oi the saints and martyrs who lie buried
beneath th*' floor of its nave, his recital being
punctuated at thirty-second Intervals by ex-
plosions, each a little louder than the one pre-
ceding. Finally a shell came so low that I
*'%
IN THE FIELD
35
thought it was going through the roof. It
came so near, in fact, that I suggested it
was getting on toward dinner time and that
we really ought to be on our way. But the
curr was not to be hurried. He had had no
visitors for nearly a year and he was deter-
mined to make the most of us. He insisted on
showing us that cathedral from sacristy to
belfry, and if he thought that we were missing
anything he carefully explained it all over
again.
" W hy do you stay on here, father ? " I asked
him. " A shell is likely to drop in on you at
any moment."
1 hat is as Jod wills, monsieur," was the
quiet answer. " A capt in does not leave his
siiip in a storm. I have my people to look
after, for they are as helpless as children and
look to me for advice. And the wounded also.
We have turned the sacristy, as you saw, into
a dressing-station. Yes, there is much to do.
If a shell comes it will find me at my post of
duty doing what I may to serve God and
France."
So we went away and left him standing
there alone in the doorway of his shattered
i
36
\'IVE LA FRANCE !
cathedral, a picturesque and gallant figure,
with his vvhi:^ hair coming down upon his
shoulders and hif tall figure wrapped in the
black soutane. To such men as these the peo-
ple f)f France owe a debt that they can never
repay, 'i'hough they wear cassocks instead of
cuirasses, though they carry Bibles instead of
bayonets, they are none the less real soldiers
— soldiers of the Lord.
It nlu^t be borne in mind that the task
ot the artiller} is far easier in hilly or moun
tainous country, such as is found along the
Aisne and in the Vosges and Alsace, where
tiu' movements of the enemy can be observed
with comparative facility and where both
observers and gunners can usually find a
certain degree of shelter, than in Artois and
Flanders, where the country is as flat as the
top of a table, with notliing even remotelv
resembling a hill on which the observers can
bo stationed or behind which the guns can be
CMicealed. In the flat country the guns,
which in all cases arc carefully masked bv
means of branches from detection by hostile
aircraft, take position at distances varying from
two thousand to five thousand yards from the
IN THE FIELD
11
3
t
"»
s
enemy's trenches. Immediately in lie rear of
each gun is a subterranean shelter, in which the
gunners can take refuge in case a German battery
locates thcni and attempts to .hell them out.
An artilkry subaltern, known in the British
service as the " forward observing officer,"
goes up to the infantry trenches and chooses a
position, sometimes in a tree, sometimes in a
shattered church-tower, sometimes in a i r .
of dug-out, from which he can obtain an un-
obstructed view of his battery's zone of fire.
He IS to his battery very much what a coach is
to a football team, giving his men directions
by telephone instead of through a megaphone,
but, unlike the coach, he is stationed not on
tile side-line but on the firing-line. Laid on
the surface of the ground, connecting him
witli the battery, is the field-telephone. As
wires are e,.,ily cut by bursting shells, thev are
now being laid in a sort of ladder formati<.n
?o that a dozen wires may be cut witJiout
mterrupting communication. When the noise
i^ so deafening that the voice of the observing
officer cannot be heard on the field-telephone
communication is carried on in the Morse code
by means of a giant buzzer. Amid all the
38
\ I\ i; LA FRANCE !
uproar of battle the observing officer has to
keep careful track, through his glasses, of
every shell his battery fires, and to inform his
battery commander by telephone ot the effect
of h\< fire. He mu.t make no mistakes, for on
those j^nriions <<{ the battle-line where the
trenches are frequently less than a hundred
y.i\U ;ir.ut the -^liLrhtest miscalculation in
t^^iviiig till- range might land the shells among
Iii- own men. 'I'he critical moment for the
ob-erving otFicer is, however, when the enemy
makes a sudden rush and swarms of helmetcd.
grey-clad figures, climbing out of their trenches,
come rolling forward in a steel-tipped wave,
tripping in the barbed wire and falling in ones
and twos and dozens. Instantly the French
trenches crackle and roar into the full blast
of magazine fire. The rattle of the machine
guns sounds like a boy drawing a stick along
the palings of a picket fence. The air quivers
to the incessant crash of bursting shrapnel.
'"Infantry attack!" calls the observation
ofiicer into the telephone receiver which is
clamped to his head. " Commence firing ! "
and his battery, two or three miles in
the rear, begins pouring shrapnel on the
■VfiJBf:t
IN THE FIELD
39
- •(
advancing Germans. But still the grey
figure? come on, hoarsely cheering. " Drop
twenty-five ! " lie orders. " Careful with your
fuse-setting . . . very close to our trenches."
The French shrapnel sprays the ground imme-
diately in front of the French trenches as a
street cleaner sprays the pavement with a hose.
'I'he grey line checks, falters, sways uncertainly
before the blast of steel. Men begin to fall
by dozens and scores, others turn and run for
their lives. With a shrill cheer the French
infantry spring from their trenches in a
counter-attack. " Raise twenty-five ! . . .
raise fifty ! " telephones the observing officer
as the blue figures of his countrymen sweep
forward in the charge. And so it goes, the
guns backing up the French attacks and break-
ing the German ones, shelling a house or a
haystack for snipers, putting a machine gun
out of business, dropping death into the
enemy's trenches or sending its steel calling-
cards across to a German battery whose posi-
tion has been discovered and reported by
wireless by a scouting French aeroplane. And
all the time the youngster out in front,
flattened to the ground, with glasses at his eyes
40
VIVE LA FRANCE !
ff
and a telephone at his lips, acts the part of
prompter and tells the guns when to speak
their parts.
In reading accounts of artillery fire it should
be remembered that there are' two types of
shell in common use to-day— shrapnel and
high explosive— and that they arc used for
entirely different purposes and produce en-
tirely different results. Shrapnel, which is
intended only for use against infantry in the
open, or when lightly entrenched, is a shell
with a very thin steel body and a small burst-
ing charge, generally of low-power explosive,
in the base. By means of a time-fuse the'
projectile is made to burst at any given moment
after leaving the gun, the explosion of the
weak charge breaking the thin steel case and
liberating the bullets, which fly forward v\ith
the velocity of the shrapnel, scattering much
as do tJie pellets from a shot-gun. At a range
of 3500 yards the bullets of a British 1 8-pound
shrapnel, 375 in number, cover a space of 250
yards long and 30 yards wide— an area of more
than one and a half acres. Though terribly
effective against infantry attacks v.r unprotected
batteries, shrapnel are wholly useless against
IN THE FIELD
41
fortified positions, strongly built houses, or
deep and well-planned entrenchments. The
difference between shrapnel and liigh ex-
plosive is the difference between a shot-gun
and an elephant rifle. The liigh-explosive
shell, which is considerably stronger than the
shrapnel, contains no bullets but a charge of
high explosive — in the French service melinite,
in the British usually lyddite, and in the
CJerman army trinitrotoluene. The effect of
tliL ]ii<,']i explosive is far more concentrated
than that of shrapnel, covering only one-
fifteenth of the area affected by the latter.
Tliough shrapnel has practically no effect on
barbcd-vvire entanglements (jr on concrete,
and very little on earthworks, high-explosive
shells of the same calibre destroy everything
in the vicinity, concrete, wire entanglements,
steel shields, guns, and even the trencher them-
selves disappearing like a dynamited stump be-
fore tlie terrific blast. 'I'he men holding the
trenches are driven into their dug-outs, and
may be reached even there by higli-explosive
shells fired from high-angle howitzers.
The commanding importance of the high-
explosive shell in tliis war is due m the peculiar
42
\IVF LA FRANCE !
nature of tlic contlict. Instead of fi^'hting in
tlie open fuld, the struggle has developed
!ito what i-, to all intents and purposes, a
fortress warfare on the most gigantic scale.
In this warfare all strategic manfruvres are
absent, because mancEuvrcs are impossible on
;.'round wlure every square yard is marked and
swipt by artillery fire. The opposing armies
are not simply entrenched. They liave pro-
teercd them elves with masses of concrete and
•^teel armour, so that the so-called trenches
are in reality concicte forts, shielded and
caHinated with armour plate, flanked with
rapiJ-fircrs and mortars, linked to one another
by marvellously concealed communicating
trenche- which are protected in turn by the
tire of heavy batteries, guarded by the most
ingenious entanglements, pitfalls and other
obstructions that the mind of man has been
able to devise, and defended by machine guns,
in the enormous proportion of one to every
fifty men, mounted behind steel plates and
capable of firing six hundred shots a minute.
In these subterranean works dwell the infantry,
abundantly provided with hand grenades and
appliances for throwing bombs and flaming
IN THE FIELD
43
oil, tlicir rifles trained, day and night, on the
-p.ici' ovtr uhicli an entinv must ailvanct.
Tlidt i» tlic sort of wall which one side or the
(.thtr ull! have to break through in order to
win ill this war. The only way tw take such a
position i^ i\v frontal attack, and the only way
to jnakc .1 frontal attack possil is by paving
the WMV with such a torrent of liigh explosive
that h ith entanglements and earthworks are
literally torn to pieces ana the infantry defend-
ing them demoralized or annihilated. Xo one
before the war could have imagined the vast
quantity (.f shells re |uired tor such an opera-
tion. In order to prepare tlie way for an
infantry attack on a German position near
Arras, the French fired two hundred thousand
rounds of high explosive in a single day — and
the <-cout« came back to report that not a
barbed-wire entanglement, a trench, or a
living human being remained. During the
same battle the British, owing to a shortage
of high-explosive ammunition, were able to
precede their attack by only forty minutes
of shell fire. This was wholly insufficient to
clear away the entanglements and other ob-
structions, and, as a result, the men were
? i
44 MVF LA FRANCE !
literally mowed down by tlic (krman machine
Kuns. r.vcn vviicn the stormin^'-partics suc-
ceed in rcachin- tlic first line of the emmy's
trenches and bayonet or drive <nit the de-
fenders, the ..pp,.sin^' artillery, witii a literal
VN..I1 ni fire, effectively prevents anv reinf-.rce-
nients from advancin^i,' t.. their support.
Shattered and exliausted tliougli iluy are,
the attackers must instantly set to wurk to'
fortify and consolidate the captured trenches,
bemg subjected, meanwhile, to a much more-
accurate bombardment, as the enemy knows,
of course, the exact range of his former p<...itions
^ind IS able to drop },is shells into them wilh
unerrin- accuracy. It is (,bvious tliat such
offensive movements cannot be multiplied or
prolonged indefinitely, both on account of the
severe mental and physical strain on the men
and the appalling losses which they involve.
Neither can such offensives be improvised. A
commanding officer cannot smash home a
frontal attack on an enemy's position at any
moment that he deems auspicious anv more
than a surgeon can perform a major ..p.ration
without fir.st preparing his patient plu>icallv.
Before laumhing an attack the ground must be
IN THK FIKLI)
45
minutely studied ; tlic position to be attacked
must be reconnoitred and pliotogrjphed by
aviators ; advanced trenches must he dug ;
reserve troops must be moved forward and
batteries brought into petition witliout arous-
ing the suspicions of the enemy ; and, most
important of all, enormous quantities of pro-
jectile- and other material must be gathered
in one place designated by the officer in charge
of tlie operations. The greatest problem pre-
entid by an offensive movement is that of
JeHvering to the artillery the vast supplies of
?he]l> necessary to pave the way for a successful
attack. To give some idea ol what this means,
1 nui,'ht inciiiion that the (jermans. durin" the
cro-ing of the Si\n, Jired seven hundred thousand
shells in jour hours.
There are no words between the covers of the
dictionary which can convey any adequate idea
of vslut one of these great ariillery actions is
like. One has to see — and hear — it. Buildings
of brick and stone ci>llapse as though they were
built of cards. Whole towns are razed to the
ground as a city of tents would be levelled by
a cyclone. Trees arc snapped off like carrots.
Gaping holes as large as cottage cellars sud-
46
VIVE LA FRANCE !
h
I
dcnly appear in the fields and in the stone-
paved roads. Geysers of smoke and earth
shoot hi^'h into tlie air. The fields are strewr
with the sh(;cking remains of what had once
been men: bodies without heads or with-
out legs ; legs and arms and heads without
bodies. Dead horses, broken waggons, be.it
and shattered equipment arc everywhere.
The noise is beyond all description— yes,
beyond all conception. It is like a close-by
clap of tliunder which, instead of lasting tor a
fraction of a second, lasts for hours. There is
no break, no pause in the hell of sound, not
even a momentary diminution. The ground
heavr> and shudders beneath your feet. You
find it difficult to breathe. Your head throb<
until y.m think that it is about to burst. Your
cyeb.ill-, ache and burn. Giant fingers seem
to be >tcadily pressing your car-drums inward.
I he very atmosphere palpitates to the tre-
mend..us detonations. The howl of the shell-
storm passing overhead gives you the feeling
that til- skies are falling. Compared with it
the n.ar ,,f the cannon at Waterloo or even
at (Gettysburg must have sounded like the
popping of fire-crackers.
Inconceivably awe-inspiring and terrifying
v4
■5*
<n!in.in vie.ui Uiiii; in Irtmt nt the Fri lu h trciuhc^
I'll ihr -liorc- lit iltc Nortli Sea
• Mii.il -\ ~l. n. I iTc-.. t.> V » i.i. h If. I. Ii.-- Ill"
> t I; a. it .■ N II . ~. , I i!,. \;j,.
"'■ CtUvin!. ,s.„-,,„
IN THE FIELD
47
()
as is a modern artillery action, one eventually
becomes accustomed to it, but I have yet to
meet the person who could say with perfect
truthfulne-s that he was indifferent to the fire
f the great German siege cannon. I have
three times been under the fire of the German
Mege-guns — during the bombardments of
Antwerp, of Soissons, and of Dunkirk — and I
hope with all my heart that I shall never have
the experience again. Let me put it to you,
mv friends. How would you feel if you were
>lctping quite peacefully in — let us say — the
Hotel Metropole, and at six o'clock in the morn-
ing something dropped from the clouds, and in
the pavement of Northumberland .Avenue blew
a Imle large enough to bury a horse in ? And
u hat would be your sensations if, still bewildered
bv the suddenness of your awakening, you ran
to the window to see what had happened, and
something that sounded like an exprets-train
came hurtling through the air from somewhere
over in Lambeth, and with the crash of an ex-
ploding powder-m.ill transformed Whitelcy's
into a heap of pulverized stone and concrete .•'
Well, that is precisely what happened to me
one beautiful spring morning in Dunkirk.
To be quite frank, I didn't like Dunlirk from
48
VIVE LA FRANCE !
1'
the first. Its empty streets, the shuttered win-
dows of its shops, and the inky blackness into
which the city was plunged at night from fear
of aeroplanes, combined to give me a feeling
of uneasmess and depression. The place was
about as cheerful as a country cemetery on a
rainy evening. From the time I set foot in it
1 J.ad the feeling that something was going to
happen. I found that a room had been re-
served for me on the upper floor of the local
hostelry, known as the Hotel des Arcades-
prcsumably because there are none. I did not
particularly relish the idea of sleeping on the
upper floor, with nothing save the roof to ward
off a bomb from a marauding aeroplane for
ever .nice I was under the fire of Zeppelins in
Antwerp, I have made it a point tJ put as
many floors as possible between me and the
skv.
It must have been about six o'clock in the
morning when I was awakened by a splitting
crash which made my bedroom windows rattle
A moment later came another and then another,
each louder and therefore nearer than the one
preceding. All down the corridor doors began
to open, and I heard voices excitedly inquiring
IN THE FIELD
49
what was happening. I didn't have to inquire.
I knew from previous experience. A German
Taube was raining death upon the city.
'I'hrowing open my shutters 1 could see the
machine quite plainly, its armour-plated body
ulcamin.i: in the morning sun like polished
>ilvcr .IS it »wept in ever-widening circles across
the skv. Somewhere to the east a pom-pom
began its infernal trip-hammerlike clatter. An
armoured-car, evidently British from the
" K.N." painted on its turret, tore into the
Hiuare in front of the hotel, the lean barrel of
it^ quick-firing gun sweeping the sky, and began
to ^end shell after shell at the aerial intruder.
Fr.nn down near the water front came the
raucous wail of a ste.m-siren warning the
people to get under cover. A church bell
be-an to clang hastily, insistently, imperatively.
h .cemed to say, "To your cellars ! To your
cellars! Hurry! . . . Hurry ^ . . . Hurry!"
From the belfry ot the church of St. Floi a
flag with blue and white stripes was run up
a, a warning to the townspeople that death
was abroad. Suddenly, above the tumult of
the bells and horns and hurrpng footsteps,
eaine a new and inconceivably terrifying
I)
50
VIVE LA FRANCE !
sound: a l„w. dccp-.oncd roar rapidly risi„„
no a ,hund.r.,us crescendo lite 'an 'x'e"!
"am approadnng from far down ,he subLv.
,? "J"'''^ '^"""^ our heads it sounded as
housh a g,an, in the sky were .earing migh.v
een,ed to ruck and sway. The hotel shook ,,,
ts foundafons. The pictures on the wall
threatened to come down. The g ss
the window, rattled until I thought , ha, it
wotdd break Fron, beyond the' ho:! to;
n the d,rect,on of the receiving hospital and
he radway nat.on a mushroom-shaped cloud
of green-brown smoke shot suddenly^-,,, J.
th<- »r. Out ,n the corridor a woman screamed
h>stcru,dly: •• My God ! My God ! ThoAe
the clatter of footsteps on the stairs a, the
guests rushed for the cellar. , began to dr s '
No fireman responding to a third alarm ever
dressed quicker. Ju„ as I „as struggling Jth
my boots there came another whSi g' To '
and another terrific detonation. High f„ the
Ger" ' "'^'^---"« ^ity still circled h
German aeroplane, informing by wireies, the
1
IN THE FIELD
51
( itrman gunners, more than a score of mUes
away acro>s the Belgian border, where their
shells were hitting. Think of it ! Think of
bombarding a city at a tan^e oj twenty-three
miles and every shot a hit ! That is the marvel
(,l this modern warfare. Imagine the Great
Western Station, the Albert Hall, the Crystal
Palace and the London Hospital being blown
to MTiithcreens by shells fired from Windsor.
And it was not a 42-centimetre siege-gun
either, but a 15-inch naval gun which the
Germans had brought from Kiel and mounted
behind ihcir lines in Flanders. Though
French and British aviators made repeated
tligin^ over the German lines for the purpose
of locating the gun and putting it out of
business, their efforts met with no success, as
the ingenious Teutons, it seems, had dug a
sort of tunnel into which the gun was run back
after each shot and there it stayed, in perfect
security, until it was fired again. Is it any
wonder that the Germans are so desperately
anxious to reach Calais, with the fort-crowned
cliffs of Dover rising across the channel less
than twenty miles away ?
Descending to the cellars of the hotel, I
JUjt
S2
VIVE LA FRANCE !
lound that there was standing-room only.
Guests, porters fooks, waiters, chambermaids,
English Red Cross nurses, and a French colonel
wearing the Legion of Honour were shivering
in the dampness amid the cobwebs and the
wine-bottles. Every time a shell exploded
the wine-bottles in their bins shook and
quivered as though they, too, were alive and
frightened. I l.iy no claim to bravery, hut in
other bombarded cities I have seen what
happens to the people in the cellar when a shell
strikes that particular building, and I had no
desire to end my career like a rat in a trap.
Should you ever, by any chance, find yourself
in a city which is being bombarded, take my
advice, I beg of you, and go out into the middle
of the nearest open square and stay there until
the bombardment is over. I believe that far
more people are killed during bombardment
by falling masonry and timbers than by the
shells themselves. As I went upstairs I heard
a Frenchwoman angrily demanding of the
chambermaid why she had not brought her
hot water. " But, madame," plea led the
terrified giri, - tlic city is being bombarded."
" Is that any reason why I sliould not wash .' "
w.'ta^r J
IN THK FIKLl)
53
,uvd the irate laJy. " Bring my hot water
I in>iantlv."
At cil'ht (.'cK.ck thf officer commanding the
f ^arriMm hurried in. He had invited me to
Umch uith him. "l am desolated that I
i taiii'Mt have the pleasure ol your company at
[ ufjr'umr. Mon>ieur Powell," said he, "but it
j i^ n< t wi^e for you to remain in the city. 1 am
I responsible to the Government for your safety,
1 and it would make things easier for me if you
1 would K"- 1 li*»ve taken the liberty of sending
I iMf y..ur car." You can call it cowardice or
I tiini'dity <.r anything you please, but 1 am not
I at .ill ashamed to admit that I was never so
i glad U) have an invitation cancelled. I have
• had a v.inewhat extensive acquaintance with
bombardmen-=, and I have always found that
iho^e who speak lightly of them arc those who
have never seen "i.e.
In order to get -ut of range of the German
^lK•lls mv driver, .ictins under the orders of
the commandant, turned the bonnet of the
I car toward Bergues, t^ve miles to the south-
u..ru. But we tound that Berguc< had not
iHcn ..verlooked by the German gunners,
haviiig. indeed, ^utiered more severely than
54 VIVE LA FRANCE !
Dunkirk. When we arrived the bombard-
ment was just over and the dust was still
rising from the shattered houses. Twelve
38-centimetre shells had landed in the rery
heart of the little town, sending a score or
more of its inhabitants, men, women, and
children, to the hospital and a like number to
the cemetery.
A few hours before Bergues had been as
quaint and peaceful and contented a town of
five thousand people as you could have found
in France. Because of its quaint and simple
charm touring motorists u^cd to go out of
their way to see it. It is fortified in theory
but not in fact, for its moss-grown ramparts,
which dale from the Crusaders, have about as
much military significance as the 'lower of
London. But the guide-boob describe it as
a fortified town, and that was all the excuse
the Germans needed to turn loose upon it
sudden death. To-day that little town is an
empty, broken shell, its streets piled high with
the brick and plaster of its ruined homes.
One has to see the ruin produced by a 38-centi-
mctre shell to believe it. If one hits a build-
ing that building simply ceases tu exist. It
fe-i.^'
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MICROCOPY RESOIUTION TEST CHART
ANSI a"d ISO TEST CHART No 2
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IN THE FIELD
55
crumbles, disintegrates, disappears. I do not
mean to say that its roof is ripped of! or that
one of its walls is blown away. I mean to say
that the whole building crashes to the ground
as though flattened by the hand of God. The
Germans sent only twelve of their shells into
Bergues, but the central part of the town looked
like Market Street in San Francisco after the
earthquake. One of the shells struck a hospital
and exploded in a ward filled with wounded
soldiers. They are not wounded any longer.
Another shell completely demolished a three-
story brick house. In the cellar of that house
a man, his wife, and their three children had
taken refuge. There was no need to dig graves
for them in the local cemetery. Throughout
the bombardment a Taube hung over the
doomed town to observe the effect of the shots,
and to direct by wireless the distant gunners.
I wonder what the German observer, peering
down through his glasses upon the wrecked
hospital and the shell-torn houses and the
mangled bodies of the women and children,
thought about it all. It would be interesting
to know, wouldn't it ?
II. OxN THE BRITISH
BATTLE-LINE
ALONG a road in the outskirts of that
i'Vcnch town which is the British
^ Headquarters a youth was running.
He was of considerably less than medium
height, and fair-haired and very slender. One
would have described him as a nice-looking
boy. He wore a jersey and white running-
shorts which left his knees bare, and he was
bare-headed. Shoulders, back and chest well
out, he jogged along at the steady dog-trot
adopted by athletes and prize-fighters who are
in training. Now, in ordinary times there is
not anything particularly remarkable in seeing
a scantily clad youth dog-trotting along a
country road. You assume that he is training
for a cross-country event, or for a seat in a
'varsity shell, or for the feather-weight cham-
pionship, and you let it go at that. But these
are not ordinary times in France, and ordinary
voung men in running-shorts are not per-
mitted to trot along the roads as they list m
;6
ON THE BRITISH BA'ITLE-LINE 57
the immediate vicinity of British Headquarters.
Even if you travel, as I did, in a large grey car,
with an oflficcr of the Erench General Staff
for companion, you arc halted every few
minutes by a sentry who turns the business
end of a ritle in your direction and demands
to see your papers. But no one challenged
the young man in the running-shorts or asked
to see hi:' papers. Instead, whenever a soldier
caught sight of him that soldier clicked his
heels together and stood rigidly at attention.
After you had observed the curious effect
which the appearance of this young man pro-
duced on the military of all ranks it suddenly
struck you that his face was strangely f miliar.
Then you all at once remembeied
had seen it hundreds of times in the
and the illustrated papers. Under ii
caption, " His Royal Highness th.- '
Wales." That young man will .^ ■
he lives, sit in an ancient chair in • , ciuninster
Abbey, and the Archbishop of Canterbury
will place a crown upon his head, and his
picture will appear on coins and postage-stamps
in use over half the globe.
Now, the future King of England—
:i'ic
di the
'ace of
.lay, if
58
VIVE LA FRANCE !
Edward VIII they will doubtless call him— is
not getting up at daybreak and reeling off
half a dozen miles or so because he particularly
enjoys it. He is doing it with an end in view.
He is doing it for precisely the same reason that
the prize-fighter does it— he is training for a
battle. To me there was something wonder-
fully suggestive and characteristic in the sight
of that young man plugging doggedly along
the country road. He seemed to epitomize
the spirit which I found to exist along the
whole length of the British battle-line. Every
British soldier in France has come to appreciate
that he is engaged in a struggle without
parallel in history— a struggle in which he is
confronted by formidable, ferocious, resource-
ful, and utterly unscrupulous opponents, and
from which he is by no means certain to
emerge a victor — and he is, therefore, methodi-
cally and systematically preparing to win that
struggle just as a pugilist prepares himself for
a battle in a prize-ring.
The British soldier has at last come to a
realization of the terrible gravity of the situa-
tion which faces him. You don't hear him
singing " Tipperary " any more or boasting
h 1
■m-^^'3fmtKv^9tF^r^!kiak^w..- r- ".■'^L)pr.?.'^G-.»^-->v;.T~',tJ" ^^-
.«i^
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 59
to
about what he is going to do when he jrcts t(
Berlin. He has co ne to have a most profound
respect for the fig/ ting qualities of the men
in the spiked helmets. He knows that he, an
amateur boxer as it were, is up against the
world's heavy-weight professional champion,
and he perfectly appreciates that he has, to
use his own expression, *' a hell of a job " in
front of him. He has already foui. ' out, to
his cost and to his very great disgust, that his
opponent has no intention of being hampered
by the rules laid down by the late Marquis
of Queensberry, having missed no opportunity
to gouge or kick or hit below the belt. But the
British soldier has now become familiar with
his opponent's tactics, and one of these days,
when he gets quite ready, he is going to give
that opponent the surprise of his life by land-
ing on him with both feet, spikes on his shoes,
and brass knuckles on his fingers. Meanwhile
like the young Prince in the running-shorts,
he has buckled down with grim determination
to the task of getting himself into condition.
1 suppose that if I were really politic and
far-sighted I would cuddle up to the War
OfBce and make myself solid with the General
6o
VIVE LA FRANCE !
Staff by confidently assorting that the Briti>h
Army is the nv)>t efficient killing-machine in
existence, and that it^ complete and early
triumph is as certain as that the sparks fly
upward ; neither (jf which assertions would be
true. It should be kept in mind, however,
that the British did not begin the building ot
their war-machine until after the outbreak of
hostilities, while the German organization is
the result of upward of half a century of un-
ceasing tliought, experiment, and endeavour.
But what he British have accomplished since
the war began is one of the marvels of military
history. Lord Kitchener came to a War
Office which had long been in the hands of
lawyers and politicians. Not only was he
expected to remodel an institution which had
become a national joke, but at the same time
to raise a huge volunteer army. In order to
raise this army he had to have recourse to
American business methods. He employed a
clever advertising specialist to cover the walls
and newspapers of the United Kingdom with
all manner of striking advertisements, some
pleading, some bullying, some caustic in tone,
by which he has proved that, given patriotic
■^^-liviF^Iv^rr?^;
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINF 6i
impulse, advertising tor people to go to war
is just like advertising for pec.plc to buy auto-
mobiles or shaving soap or smoking tobacco.
It was not soothing to British pride— but it
got the men. Late in the spring of 191 5»
after half a year or more of training, during
which they were worked as a negro teamster
works a mule, those men were marched abroad
transports and sent acro.>s the Channel. So
admirably executed were the plans of the War
Office and so complete the precautions taken
by the .\dmir.ihy, that this great fc^rcc was
landed on the Continent without the loss of
a single life from German mines or submarines.
That'', in itself, is one of the greatest accom-
plishments of the war. England now (November
1915) has in France an army of appro.ximately a
million men. But it is a new army. The bulk of it
is without experience and without experienced
re-iments to stiflfen it and give it confidence,
tor the army of British regulars which landed
in France at the outbreak of the war has ceased
to exist. The old regimental names remain,
but the officers and men who composed those
reeiments are, to-day, in the hospital or the
cemeteries. The losses suffered by the British
^^^.--^A^m
62 VIVE LA FRANCE !
Army in Flanders arc appalling. The West
Kent Regiment, for example, has been three
limes wiped out and three times reconstituted.
Of the Black Watch, the Rifle Brigade, the
Infantry of the Household, scarcely a vestige
of the original establishments remains. Hardly
less terrible are the losses which have been
suflFcred by the Canadian Contingent. The
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry
landed in France 1400 strong. To-day only
140 remain. The present colonel was a private
in the ranks when the regiment sailed from
Quebec.
The machine that the British have knocked
together, though still a trifle wobbly and some-
what creaky in its joints, is, I am convinced,
eventuallv going to succeed. But you cannot
appreciate what it is like or what it b accom-
plishing by reading about it ; you have to sec it
for yourself as I did. That corner of France
lying between the forty miles of British front
and the sea is, to-day, I suppose, the busiest
region in the world. It reminded mc of the
Panama Canal Zone during the rush period of
the Canal's construction. It is as busy as the lot
where the Greatest Show on Earth is getting
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 63
ready for the afternoon performance. Down
the roads, far as the eye can sec, stretch long
lines of London motor-buses, sombre war-
coats of elephant grey replacing the staring
advertisements of teas, tobaccos, whiskeys,
and theatrical attractions, crowded no longer
with pale-faced clerks hurrying toward the
City, but with sun-tanned men in kliaki hurry-
ing toward the trenches. Interminable pro-
cessions of motor-lorries go lumbering past,
piled high with the supplies required to feed
and clothe the army, practically all of which
are moved from the coast to the front by road,
the railways being reserved for the transport of
men and ammunition ; and the ambulances,
hundreds and hundreds of them, hurrying
their blood-soaked cargoes to the hospitals so
that they may go back to the front for more.
So crowded are the highways behind the
British front that at the cross-roads in the
country and at the street crossings in the towns
are posted mUitary policemen as if they were
Bobbies at the Bank or at Piccadilly Circus.
The roads are never permitted to fall mto
disrepair, for on their condition depends the
rapidity with which the army can be supplied
ft VIVK l.A FR \N<. K '.
., , , ,„a ammunition. "'■•«'-' '•''•^
^,,n,., and -t.am r i ^^ .^ ^^^.^.^_
,rc a. w..rk constantly. VV hen . ^^^
r-rancc will ^a... W..c.r r,. - -a ^^^^ ^^^
„K,n .l.an .l>c ever 'f J^ ;,„(,„, p,,,e,i-
,p...d-limi.aKn,cvcr>«laR-Kc
,^„,m,Vnownin.-ranc>..a >^^^.^^^,^.
„a, car.k.s cnoui;!. to «^' " ,-,^, \, ,rc-
.lu.nt .ntc-rvaU al..n, th . _^^ ^^^ ^^,
,h.,p- and m..tor-ca '^^ '"^ ,,,^. ^„,,,,,
I- ..( the rcrair cars, vaitanit .
..n wlKcU, «..icb. vvlK-n new- f ■-
,. breakdown is rcccvcd, ,.„ uar.
,h,.sccn...<tr,.ubU-asafir-™.n s^r ^^^^^^
„alarm,.ffirc A n> ■.'^^^.,,,^, „„,,,
„itln,ut l.gl.ts, as a r.sul ^^ ^.^^^
..„,.„. and '-r^-^f^ ^2 in tl-e dark-
disaster by runmng "« the a .^^^^^^^
-" ^"^'.z^;'::].:;;. ui'a'; fotni,. .nishap
■'" ^r" S . Vic Co rs has dcsi5n.d a most
the Army Service v,ori .
in,..nious c<-"iv^ncc «h ch a k^^^^^^ ^_^ ^^^
machines nnt of the d.td, ana
road again as easily as though thn J „^,^^
born mules, k^™ '^e dc.r
iMr.i- tlic t-yc '.in ■■-;c :rct. Ii Inig Imcs nt l.oiuioii
,; f^ 111 \*.ir-OUt^ <>t cupll.Ult ^;riv. >rn'.\.kii Ul'.il -1111-
nu-ii m Ui.iKi 1 urrviiiL.' t..u,ir.l iK'-' irciulic '
in.'t'>r
taiiiiCvl
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 65
\vc passed, whether chateau or cottage, was
marked the number of men who could be
billeted upon it. There are signs indicating
where water can be obtained and fodder and
pasturage and petrol. In every town and
village are to be found military interpreters,
known by a distinctive cap and brassard, who
are always ready to straighten out a misunder-
standing between a Highlander from the north
' <if the Tweed and a tirailleur from Tunisia,
wlio will assist a Ghurka from the Indian hill
cmntry in bargaining for poultry with a
Flemish-speaking peasant, or instruct a lost
Senegalese how to get back to his command.
An officers' training-school has been established
at St. Omcr, which is the British Headquarters,
where those men in the ranks who possess the
necessary education arc fitted to receive com-
missions. After this war is over the British
Army will no longer be officered by the British
aristocracy. The whulesalc promotions of en-
listed men made necessary by the appalling
losses among the officers will resiUt in com-
pletely changing the complexion of the British
military establishment. Provided he has the
necessary educational qualifications, the son of
M
.m
66 VIVE LA FRANCE !
a day labourer will hcrcalter stand as much
chance as the son of a duke. Did you know
by the way, that the present Ch.ef ot the
General Staff entered the army as a private
in the ranks ! , , .i,„ RrJtUh
The wonderful thoroughness of the British
is exemplified by the bulletins which are issue.?
every morning by the Intelligence Department
for the inf<.rmation of the brigade and regi-
mental commanders. They r-mble ordinary
handbills and contain a summary of all the
information which the Intelligence Depart-
ment has been able to collect during the pre-
ceding twenty-four hours as to what ,s gmng
on behind the German lines-movements o
troops, construction of new trenches, chang s
in the ocation ot batteries, shortage of ammum-
.ion, condition of the roads ; everything in
.hort, which might be of any conceivable v a^u.
to the British to know. For examp e, the
report might contain a sentence something hke
tWs " At five o'clock to-morrow mornmg
the Prussian Guard, which has been holding
position No. -, to the south of Ypres, w-ill be
elieved by the 47th Bavarian Landsturm -
which, by the way, would probably result in
n
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 67
the British attacking the position mentioned.
The information contained in these bulletins
comes from many sources — from spies in the
pay of the Intelligence Department, from
aviators who make reconnaissance flights over
the German lines, and particularly from the
inhabitants of the invaded regions, who, by
various ingenious expedients, succeed in com-
municating to the Allies much important
information — often at the cost of their lives.
The great base camps which the British
have established at Calais and Havre and
Boulogne and Rouen are marvels of organiza-
tion, efficiency, and cleanliness. Cities whose
macadamized streets are lined with portable
houses of wood or metal which have been
brought to the Continent in sections, and which
have sewers and telephone systems and electric
lights, and accommodation for a hundred thou-
sand men apiece, have sprung up on the sand
dunes of the French coast as though by the
wave of a magician's wand. Here, where the
fresh, healing wind blows in from the sea, have
been established hospitals, each with a thousand
beds. Huge warehouses have been built of
concrete to hold the vast quantity of stores
V
: I
68
VIVE LA FRANCE !
which arc being rushed across the Channel
by an endless procession of transports and
cargo steamers. So efficient is the British
field- post system, which is operated by the
Army Post Office Division of the Royal Engi-
neers, that within forty-eight hours after a
wife or mother or sweetheart drops a letter
into a post-box in England that letter has been
delivered in the trenches to the man to whom
it was addressed.
In order to prevent military information
leaking out through the letters which are
written by the soldiers to the folks at home,
one in every five is opened by the regimental
censor, it being obviously out of the question
to peruse them all. If, however, the writer is
able to get hold of one of the precious green
envelopes, whose colour is a guarantee of
private and family matters only, he is reason-
ably certain that his letter will not be read by
other eyes than those for which it is intended.
Nor does the field-post confine itself to the
transmission of letters, but transmits delicacies
and comforts of every sort to the boys in the
trenches, and the boys in the trenches use the
same medium to send shell fragments, German
■^
-?
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 69
helmets, and other souvenirs to their friends
at home. I kn<jvv a lady who sent her son in
Flanders a box of fresh asparagus from their
Devonshire garden on a Friday, and he had it
for his Sunday dinner. And this reminds me
of an interesting little incident which is worth
the telling and might as well be told here as
elsewhere. A well-known American business
maii, the president of one of New York's street
railway systems, has a son who is a second
lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. The father
was called back to America at a time when
his son's battery was stationed in a par-
ticularly hot corner to the south of Ypres.
The father was desperately anxious to see his
son before he sailed, but he knew that the
chances of his being permitted to do so were
almost infinitesimal. Nevertheless, he wrote
a note to Lord Kitchener explaining the cir-
cumstances and adding that he realized that
It was probably quite impossible to grant such
a request. He left the note himself at York
House. Before he had been back in his hotel
an hour he was called to the telephone. " This
is the secretary of Lord Kitchener speaking,"
said the voice. "He desires me to say that
70
VIVE LA FRANCE !
you shall certainly see your son before return-
ing to America, and that you are to hold your-
self in readiness to go to the Continent at a
moment's notice." A few days later he re-
ceived another message from the War Office :
" Take t(j-mf)rr(AV morning's boat from Folke-
stone to lioulogne. Your son will be waiting
for you on the quay." The long arm of the
great War Minister had reached out across the
Fnglish Channel and had picked that obscure
second lieutenant out from that little Flemish
village, and had brought him by motor-car to
the coast, with a twenty-four hours leave of
absence in his pocket, that he might say good-
bye to his father.
The maxim that " an army marches on its
belly " is as true to-day as when Napoleon
uttered it, and the Army Service Corps is
seeing to it that the belly of the British soldier
is never empty. Of all the fighting men in
the field, the British soldier is far and away
the best fed. He is, indeed, almost over-
fed, particularly as regards jams, marmalades,
puddings, and other articles containing large
quantitii^s of sugar, which, so the army surgeons
assert, is the greatest restorer of the muscular
^vnr-^
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 71
tissues. Though the sale of spirits is strictly
prohibited in the military zone, a ration of
rum is served out at daybreak each morning
to the men in the trenches.
To Miss Jane Addams has been attributed
the following assertion : " VVe heard in all
countries similar statements in regard to the
necessity for the use of stimulants before men
would engage in bayonet charges, that they
have a regular formula in Germany, that they
give them rum in England and absinthe in
France ; that they all have to give them the
' dope ' before the bayonet charge is possible."
Now, Miss Addams, or whoever is responsible
tor this statement, has never, so far as I am
aware, been in the trenches. Of the conditions
which exist there she knows only by hearsay.
Miss Addams says that rum is given to the
British soldier. That is perfectly true. In
pursuance of orders issued by the Army Medical
Corps, every man who has spent the night in
the trenches is given a ration (about a giU) of
rum at daybreak, not to render him reckless, as
Miss Addams would have us believe, but to
counteract the effects of the mud and water in
which he has been standing for many hours
72
VIVE LA FRANCE !
But when the author of the paragraph
asserts that the French soldiers are given
abfinthe she cr he makes an assertion that
is without foundation of fact. Not only
have I never seen a glass of absinthe served
in France since the law was passed which
made its sale illegal, but I have never seen
spirits of any kind in use in the zone of opera-
tions. More than once, coming back, chilled
and weary, from the trenches, I have attempted
to obtain either whiskey oi brandy only to
be told that its sale is rigidly prohibited in
the zone of the armies. The regular ration
of the French soldier includes now, just as
in time of peace, a pint of vin ordinaire — the
cheap wine of the country— this being, I might
add, considerably less than the man would
drink with his meals were he in civil life. As
regards the conditions which exist in the
German armies I cannot speak with the same
assurance, because I have not been with them
since the autumn of 1914. During the march
across Belgium there was, I am perfectly wiUing
to admit, considerable drunkenness among the
German soldiers, but this was due to the men
looting the wine-cellars in the towns through
ON THE BRITISH BATFLE-LINE 73
which they passed and not, as we are asked to
believe, to their officers having systematically
" doped " them. I have heard it stated,
on various occasions, that German troops are
given a mixture of rum and ether before
going into action. V\hether this is true
I cannot say. Personally, I doubt it. If a
man's life ever depends upon a clear brain
and a cool head it is when he is going into
battle. Everything considered, therefore, I am
convinced that intemperance virtually docs not
exist among the armies in the field. I feel that
tin- accusation dues grave injustice to brave
and i^ober men and that its author owes them
an apology.
The British troops are not permitted to drink
unboiled or mfiltercd water, each regiment
having two steel water-carts fitted with Birken-
feldt filters from which the men fill their water-
bottles. As a result of this precaution, dysen-
tery and diarrhoea, the curse of armies in
previous wars, have practically disappeared,
while, thanks to compulsory inoculation, typhoid
is unknown. Perhaps the most important of
all the sanitary devices which have been brought
into existence by this war, and without which
'/w.V''^;Tiy^!LD
^jaa>i
74
VIVK LA FRANCE !
it would not be possible for the men to remain
in the trenches at all, is the great force-pump
that is operated at night and which throws
lime and carbolic acid on the unburied dead.
It is, Indeed, impossible to overpraise the work
being done by the Royal Army Medical Corps,
which has, among its many other activities,
so improved and speeded up the system
of getting the wounded from the firing-
line to the hospitals that, as one Tommy
remarked, " You 'ears a 'ell of a noise, and
then the nurse says : ' Sit hup and tike this
broth.' "
Though in this war the work of the cavalry
is almost negligible : though cartridges and
marmalade are hurried to the front on motor-
trucks and the wounded are hurried from the
front back to the hospital in motor-ambulances ;
though dispatch riders bestride panting motor-
cycles instead of panting steeds ; though
scouting is done by airmen instead of horse-
men, the day of the horse in warfare has by
no means passed. Without the horse, indeed,
the guns could not go into action, for no form
of tractor has yet been devised for hauling
batteries over broken country. In fact, all of
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 75
the belligerent nations are experiencing great
difficulty in providing a sufficient supply of
iiorscs, for the average life of a war-horse is
very >lu>rt ; ten days assert some authorities,
sixteen say others. For the first time in the
history of warfare, therefore, the horse is
treated a- a creature which must be cared for
when -ick or wounded as well as when in health,
and tliis not merely from motives of sentiment
or humanity but as a detail of military effici-
ency. " For want of a nail," runs the old ditty,
" the shoe was lost ; for want of a shoe the
hor.-e was lost ; for want of a horse the rider
was lost ; for want of a rider the baf'le was
lost " — and the Royal Army Veterina. Jorps
is seeing' to it that no battles are lost lor lack
of either horses or horseshoes. The Army
\^ctcrinary Corps now has on the British sector
700 officers and 8000 men, whose business it is
to conserve the lives of the horses. The last
report that I have seen places the total number
of horses treated in the various hospital units
(each of which accommodates 1000 animals)
as approximately 81,000, of which some
47,000 had been returned to the Remount
Department as again fit for active service ;
ff^
VIVE LA FRANCE !
30,000 were still under treatment ; the balance
having died, been destroyed, or sold.
The h..r>es in use by the British Army in
France are the very pick of England, the
Colonies, and foreign countries; thorough-
bred and thrce-iuarter bred hunters from the
hunting counties and from Ireland ; hackneys,
draught and farm animals; VValers from'
Australia ; wire-jumpers from \ew Zealand ;
hardy stock from Alberta and Saskatchewan ;
sturdy ponies from the hill country of India ;
th..usands upon thousands of animals from the*
American South-West, and from the Argentine;
to say nothing of the great sixtecn-hand mules
from Missouri and Spain.
Animals suffering from wounds or sickness
are shipped back to the hospital bases on the
coast in herds, each being provided with a
separate covered stall, or, in case of pneumonia,
with a box-stall. The spotless buildings, with
their exercise tracks and acres of green pad-
docks, suggest a racecourse rather than a hos-
pital for horses injured in war. Each hospital
has its i.perating-sheds, its X-rav department.
Its wards for special ailments, its laboratories
for preventive research work, a pharmacy, a
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE tj
museum which affords opportunity for the
study of the effect? of sabre, shell, and bullet
wounds, and a staflP of three hundred trained
veterinarians. Schools have also been es-
tablished in connexion with the hospitals in
which the grooms and attendants are taught
the elements kA anatomy, dentistry, farriery, sta-
bling, feeding, sanitation, and, most important
of all, the care of hoofs. All the methods and
equipment employed arc the best that science
can suggest and money can obtain, everything
having passed the inspection of the Duke of
Portland and the Earl of Lonsdale, the two
greatest horse-breeders in England. Attaciicd
to each division of troops in the field is a mobile
veterinary section, consisting of an officer and
twenty-two men, who are equipped to render
first-aid service to wounded horses and whose
duty it is to decide which animals shall be sent
to the hospitals for treatment, which arc fit to
return to the front for further service, and
which cases are hopeless and must be destroyed.
The enormous economic value of this system
is conclusively proved by the fact that it has
reduced sickness among horses in the British
.\rmy 50 per cent., and mortality 47 per cent.
I
78
VIVE LA FRANCE !
The question that has been asked me more
frequently than any other is why the British,
with upwards of a million men in the field, are
holding only fifty miles of battle-front, as
compared with seventeen miles held by the
Belgians and nearly four hundred by the French.
There are several reasons for this. It should
be remembered, in the first place, that the
British Army is composed of green troops,
while the French ranks, thanks to the universal
service law, are filled with men all of whom have
spent at least three years with the colours. In
the second place, the British sector is by far
the most diflicult portion of the Western battle-
front to hold, not only because of the configura-
tion of the country, which ofl^ers little natural
protection, but because it lies squarely athwart
tne road to the Channel ports— and it Is to
the Channel ports that the Germans are going
if men and shells can get them there. The
fighting along the British sector is, moreover,
of a more desperate and relentless nature than'
elsewhere on the Mied line, because the
Germans nourish a deeper hatred for the
English than for all their other enemies put
together.
-1
i
1
1
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 79
It was against the British, remember, that
the Germans first used their poison-gas. The
first engagement of importance in which
gas played a part was the second battle of
Ypres,, lasting from April 22 until May 13,
which will probably take rank in history as one
of the greatest battles of all time. In it the
Germans, owing to the surprise and confusion
created by their introduction of poison-gas,
came within a hair's breadth of breaking
through the Allied line, and would certainly
have done so had it not been for the gallantry
and self-sacrifice of the Canadian Division,
wliich, at the cost of appalling losses, won im-
perishable fame. The (jcrman bombardment
of Ypres began on April 20 and in forty-eight
hours, so terrible was the rain of heavy pro-
jectiles which pc ured down upon it, the quaint
old city, with its exquisite Cloth Hall, was but
a heap of blackened, smoking ruins. That
portion of the Mlicd line to the north of the
city was held, along a front of some four miles,
by a French division composed of Colonials,
Algerians, and Senegalese, stiffened by several
line regiments. Late in the afternoon of the
22nd, peering above their trenches, they saw,
« 1
I
■1
((/
8o
VIVE LA FRANCE !
rolling toward them across the Flemish plain,
an impalpable cloud of yellowish- green, which,
fanned by a brisk wind, moved forward at the
speed of a trotting horse. It came on with
the reinorselessness of Fate. It blotted out
what was happening behind it as the smoke
screen from a destroyer masks the manoeuvres
of a Dreadnought. The spring vegetation
shrivelled up before it as papers shrivel when
thrown into a fire. It blasted everything it
t-.'ched as with a hand of death. No one
knew what it was or whence it came. Nearer
it surged and nearer. It was within a hundred
metres of the French position . . . fifty
thirty . . . ten . . . and then the silent
horror was upon them. Men began to cough
and hack and strangle. Tl -ir eyes smarted
and burned with the pungent, acrid fumes.
SolJietb staggered and fell before it in twos
and fours and dozens as miners succumb to
fire-damp. PJen, strained and twisted into
grotesque, horrid attitudes, were sobbing their
lives out on the floors of the trenches. The fire
of rifles and machine guns weakened, died down,
ceased. The whole line swayed, wavered]
trembled on the verge of panic. Just then a
i
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 8i
giant Algerian shouted,"The Boches have turned
loose evil spirits upon us ! We can fight men,
but we cannot fight afrits! Run, brothers!
Run for your lives ! " That was all that was
needed to precipitate the disaster. The super-
stitious Africans, men from the West Coast
where voodooism still holds sway, men of the
desert steeped in the traditions and mysteries
of islam, broke and ran. The French white
troops, carried off their feet by the sudden rush,
vvcri.- swept along in the mad debacle. And
as they ran the yellow cloud pursued them
remorselessly, like a great hand reaching out
for their throats.
An eye-witness of the rout that followed
told me that he never expects to see its like
this side of the ^ates of hell. I'he fields were
dotted with blue-clad figures wearing kepis,
and brown-clad ones wearing turbans and
tarbooshes, who stumbled and fell and rose
again and staggered along a few paces and fell
to rise no more. The highways leading from
the trenches were choked with maddened,
fear-crazed white and black and brown men
who had thrown away their rifles, their cart-
ridge pouches their knapsacks, in some cases
F
i
w-.,^^rttfs<^^t'-; -i^t M^ ■■;*
82
VIVE LA FRANCE !
even their coats and shirts. Some were calling
on Christ and some on Allah and some on their
strange pagan gods. Their eyes were starting
from their sockets, on their foreheads stood
glistening beads of sweat, they slavered at the
mouth like dogs, their cheeks and breasts were
flecked with f')am. " We're not afraid of the
Bochcs ! " screamed a giant sergeant of Zouaves
on whose breast were the ribbons of a dozen
wars. " We can fight them until hell turns cold.
But this we cannot fight. Le Bon Dieu docs
not expect us tostay and die like rats ir ' sewer."
Guns and gun-caissons passed at a gallop,
Turcos and tirailleurs clinging to them, the
fear-crazed gunners flogging their reeking horses
frantically. The ditches bordering the roads
were filled with overturned waggons and
abandoned equipment. Giant negroes, naked
to the waist, tore by shrieking that the spirits
had been loosed upon them and slashing with
their bayonets at all who got in their path.
Mounted officers, frantic with anger and morti-
fication, using their swords and pistols indis-
criminately, vainly tried to check the human
stream. And through the four-mile breach
which the poison-gas had made the Germans
::m,f:z.^'fc^:. ^i^ii^ >"■«.-:.
jm~T7IVt
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 83
were pouring in their thousands. The roar
of their artillery sounded likeunceasingthunder.
The scarlet rays of the setting sun lighted up
such a scene as Flanders had never before
beheld in all its bloody history. Then dark-
ness came . nd the sky was streaked across with
the fiery trails of rockets and the sudden
splotches of bursting shrapnel. The tumult
was beyond all imagination — the crackle of
musketry, the rattle of machine guns, the
crash of high explosive, the thunder of falling
walls, the clank of harness and the rumble of
wheels, the screams of the wounded and the
groans of the dying, the harsh commands of the
officers, the murmur of many voices, and the
shutHc, shuffle, shuffle of countless hurrying
feet.
And through the breach still poured the
helmeted legions like water bursting through
a broken dam. Into that breach were thrown
the Canadians. The story of how, over-
whelmed by superior numbers of both men and
guns, choked by poison-fumes, reeling from
exliaustion, sometimes without food, for it was
impossible to get it to them, under such a rain
of shells as the world had never before seen.
feMI
84
VIVE LA FRANCE !
the brawny men from the oversea Dominion
fought on for a solid week, and thereby saved
the army from annihilation, needs no re-telling
here. Brigade after brigade of fresh troops,
division after division, was hurled against them
but still they battled on. So closely were
they pressed at times that they fought in little
groups ; men from Ontario and Quebec
shoulder to shoulder with blood-stained heroes
from Alberta and Saskatchewan. At last,
when it seemed as though human endurance
could stand the strain no longer, up went the
cry, " Here come the guns ! " and the
Canadian batteries, splashed with sweat and
mud, tore into action on the run. " Action
front ! " screamed the officers, and the
guns whirled like polo ponies so that their
muzzles faced the oncoming wave of gr^y-
" With shrapnel ! . . . Load ! " The lean and
polished projectiles slipped in and the breech-
blocks snapped home. " Fire at will ! " and
the blast of steel tore bloody avenues in the
German ranks. But fresh battalions filled
the gaps — the German reserves seemed
inexhaustible — and they still came on. At
one period of the battle the Germans were so
M
■■':■^..^^ I
%^
ON THE BRiriSll HATTLE-LINE 85
cl'sc to the guns that tlic order was given,
'• Set your fuses at zero ! *' which means that
a shell bursts almost the moment it leaves the
muzzle of the gun. It was not until early on
Friday mcjrningthat reinforcements reached the
shattJred Canadians and enabled them to hold
their ground. Later the Northumbrian Divi-
sion—Territorials arrived only three days
before from the English training-camps—
were sent to aid them and proved themselves
as good soldiers as the veterans beside whom
they fought. For days the fate of the army
hung in the balance, Ijx there seemed no end
to the German reserves, who were wiped out
by whole divisions only to be replaced by more,
but against the stone wall of the Canadian
resistance the men in the spiked helmets
threw themselves in vain. On May 13, 191 5,
after three weeks of continuous fighting, ended
the Second Battle of Ypres, not in a terrific
and decisive climax, but slowly, sullenly, like
two prize-fighters who have fought to the very
limit of their strength.
According to the present British system, the
soldiers spend three v.ceks at the front and one
week in the rear— if possible, out of sound of the
h
86 VIVE LA FRANCE !
guns. The entire three weeks at the front is,
to all intents and purposes, spent in the
trenches, though every third day the men are
given a breathing spell. Thuf weeks in the
trenches! I wonder if you of the sheltered
life have any but the haziest notion of what
that means. I wonder if you, Mr. Lawyer ;
you, Mr. Doctor ; you, Mr. Business Man, can
conceive of spending your summer vacation in
a ditch 4 feet wide and 8 feet deep, sometimes
with mud and water to your knees, sometimes
faint from heat and lack of air, in your nostrils
the stench of bodies long months dead, rotting
amid the wire entanglements a few yards in
front of you, and over your head steel death
whining angrily, ceaselessly. I wonder if ycu
can imagine what it must be like to sleep-
when the roar of the guns dies down sufficiently
to make sleep pos?iblc-^n foul straw in a hole
hollowed in the earth, into which you have to
crawl on all fours, like an animal into its lair.
I wonder if you can picture yourself as wearing
a uniform so stiff with sweat and dirt that it
would stand alone, and underclothes so rotten
with filth that they would fall apart were you
to take them otT, your body ^.. crawling with
B ,Jio. long month- dc.Kl. rn'Au^^ ..mul the- Aire
ent.un;li.nK-ni- '
•• l,„a...nc uh.u .1 miut be I.kc t,. ^Iccp m a hulc ,n thr c.rth, ,ntn
;sh,.irN..a have lu cr.uvl ou al! fuur-. like an an.nul nun it- ;.ur
^ffiS^^^fS^
1 . 1
4
ON THE BRITISH BATrLE-LlNE 87
vermin and so long unwashed that you are an
offence 10 all whom you approach— yet with
no chance to bathe or to change your clothes
or sometimes even to wash your hands and
face lor weeks on end. I wonder how your
nerves would stand the strain if you knew that
at any moment a favourable wind might bring
a gas cloud rolling down upon you to kill you
by slow strangulation, or that a shell might
drop into the trench in which you were stand-
ing in water to your knees and leave you float-
ing about in a bloody mess which turned that
water red, or that a Taubc might let loose
upon you a shower of steel arrows which would
pass through you as a needle passes through a
piece of cloth, or that a mine might be exploded
beneath your feet and distribute you over the
landscape in fragments too small to be worth
burying, or, worse still, to leave you alive amid
a lit:er of heads and arms and legs which a
moment before had belonged to your comrades,
the horror of it all turning you into a maniac
who alternately shrieks and gibbers and rocks
with insane mirth at the horror of it all. I am
perfectly aware that this makes anything but
pleasant reading, my friends, but if men ot
-^"^^m '^£iMm^m^'-i^^:^^^^^w^
:i^:T'i>-
^:^;:m^-i;^.,;y'0:;:^.n ■ , :-';i'^.,v'-:,-'XV--
88
VIVE LA FRANCE !
gen lie birth, men with university educations,
men who are accustomed to the same refine-
ments and luxuries that y<m are, can endure
thc^e thing-, why, it seems to mc that you
ought to be able to endure reading about
them.
The etiect of some of the newer types of
high-cxplo>ive shells is almost beyond beliet.
For sheer horror and destructi(m those from
the Austrian-made Skoda howitzer, known as
"Pilseners," make the famous 42-centimetre
shells seem almost kind. The Skoda shells weigh
2800 lb., and their usual curve is 4! miles high.
In soft ground they penetrate 20 feet before
cxph;ding. The exploMcm, which occurs two
seconds after impact, kills every hving thing
within 150 yards, while scores of men who
escape the tiying metal are killed, lacerated,
or Winded by the mere pressure of the gas.
This gas pressure is so terrific that it breaks in
the roofs and partitions of bombproof shelters.
Of men close by not a fragment remains. The
gas gets into the body cavities and expands,
hterally tearing them to pieces. Occasionally
the clothes are stripped off leaving only the
boots. Ritle-barrcls near by are melted as
,1 I
,,r.-. ^-i/iii.r/v'-^tH^r t«=^;r^. i^a;
ON TOE BRITISH B.VITLE-LINE 89
though struck by lightning. These mammoth
shells travel comparatively slowly, however,
Uji ".lly giving enough warning of their approach
,0 ihai iho men have time to dodge them.
Tlicir prngrjssissoslow, indeed, that sometimes
Jicy can be seen. Far more terrifying is the
smaller shell which, because of its shrill,
plaintive whine, has been nicknamed " W cary
Wilhe," or those from the new " noiseless "
tield-gun recently introduced by the Germans,
which gives no intimation of its approach until
it explodes with a shattering crash above the
trenches. Is it any wonder that hundreds of
otBcers and men are going insane from the
strain that they are under, and that hundreds
more are in the hospitals suffering from neuritis
and nervous breakdown ? Is it any wonder
that, when their terra in the trenches is over,
they have to be taken out of sight and sound
of battle and their shattered nerves restored
by means of a carefully planned routine of sports
and games, as though they were children in a
kindergarten ?
The breweries, rrills, and factories immedi-
ately behind the British hnes have, wherever
practicable, been converted into bath-houses
90
VIVE LA FRANCE !
to which the men are marched as soon as they
leave the trenches. The soldiers strip and,
retaining nothing but their boots, which they
deposit beside the bath-tub, they go in, soap
in one hand and scrubbirg-brush in the other,
the hot bath being followed by a cold shower.
The underclothes which they have taken off
arc promptly burned and fresh sets given to
them, as are also clean uniforms, the discarded
ones, after passing through a fumigating
machine, being washed, pressed, and repaired
bv the numerous Frenchwomen who are em-
ployed for the purpose, so as to be ready for
their owners the next tim.e they return from
the trenches. At one of these improvised
lath-houses thirteen hundred men pass through
each da/.
" What do the French think of the
English ? "
To every one I put that question. Summing
up all opinions, I should say that the French
thoroughly appreciate the value of Britain's
sea-power and what it has meant to them for
her to have control of the seas, but they regard
her -ack of military preparedness and the de-
ficiency of technique among the British officers
^M&^^m^
^mm^m
l#IK^;i«-%f.r .<S^i -kjtl^^^Tmk
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 91
as inexcusable ; they consider the deep-seated
opposition to conscription in England as in-
comprehensible ; they view the bickerings
between British capital and labour as little short
of criminal ; they regard the British officers who
needlessly expose themselves as being not heroic
but insane. The attitude of the British
Press was, in the earlier days of the war at
least, calculated to put sUght strain on the
entente cordiale. Anxious, naturally enough,
to throw into high relief the exploits of the
British troops in France, the British newspapers
vastly exaggerated the imports e of the
British expedition, thus throwing :he whole
picture of the war out of perspective. The
behaviour of the British officers, moreover,
though punctiliously correct, was not such as
to mend matters, for they assumed an attitude
of haughty condescension which, as I happen
to know, was extremely galling to their French
colleagues, most of whom had forgotten more
about the science of war than the patronizing
youngsters who officered the new armies had
ever known. " To Hsten to you English and
to read your newspapers," I heard a French-
man say to an EngUshman in the Travellers'
#'^^^^
92
MVE LA F • NCE !
Club in I'ari.. not loi,- au'o, ''one would
think that there was no one in France except
the Britisli Army and a few Germans."
I have never heard anyone in France suggest
that the British officer is lacking in bravery,
but I have often heard it intimated that he is
lacking in brains. The view i. held that he
regards the war as a sporting affair, much as
he"" would regard polo or a big-game hunting,
rather than as a deadly serious business. W hen
the British oflficers in Flanders brought over
several packs of hounds and thus attempted to
combine war and hunting, it created a^ more
unfavourable impression among the French
than if the British had lost a battle. " The
British Armv," a distinguished ItaUan general
remarked to me shortly before Italy pmed
the Allies, "is composed of magnificent
material ; it is well fed and admirably equipped
—but the men lock on war as sport and go into
battle as they would into a game of football."
To the Frenchman, whose soil is under the
heel of the invader, whose women have been
violated bv a ruthless and brutal soldiery,
whose historic monuments have been destroyed,
and whose towns have been sacked and burned,
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 93
this attitude of mind is absolutely incompre-
hensible, and in his heart he resents it. The
above, mind you, is written in no spirit
of criticism ; I am merely attempting to
show you the Englishman through French
eyes.
I have heard it said, in criticism, that the new
British Army is composed of youngsters. So
it is, but for the life of mc 1 fail to sec why
this should be any objection. The ranks of
both armies during our Civil War were filled
with boys still in their teens. It was one of
Wellington's generals, if I remember rightly,
who used to say that, for really desperate work,
he would always take lads in preference to
seasoned veterans because the latter were apt
to be " too cunning." " These children," ex-
claimed Marshal Ney, reviewing the beard-
less conscripts of 1 81 3, "are wonderful! I
can do anything with them ; they will go any-
where ! "
But the thing that really counts, when all is
said and done, is the spirit of the men. The
British soldier of this new army has none of
the rollicking, devil-may-care recklessness of the
traditional Tommy Atkins. He has not joined
^1
Vc-^j!-'.
mm
'#»^>r\k xtrv^-"^
^s-
'mmmMmmsi^miM^mimmjQm
94 VIVE LA FRANCE !
tiic army from any spirit of adventure or
because he wanted to see the world. He is not
an adventurer ; he is a crusader. With him it
is a deadly serious business. He has not en-
listed because he wanted to, or because he had
to, but because he felt he ought to. In ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred he has left a family,
a comfortable home, and a good job behind
him. And, unhke the stay-at-homes in Eng-
land, he doesn't make the mistake of under-
rating his enemy. He knows that the head-
lines which appear regularly in the English
papers exultantly announcing " another British
advance " are generally buncombe. He knows
that it isn't a question of advancing but of
hanging on. He knows that he will have to
fight with every ounce of fight there is in him
if he is to remain where he is now. He knows
that before the Germans can be driven out of
France and Belgium, much less across the
Rhine, all England will be wearing crape. He
knows that there is no truth in the reports that
the enemy is weakening. He knows it because
hasn't he vainly thrown himself in successive
waves against that unyielding wall of steel ?
He knows that it is going to be a long war—
t i
z-^Siiil^^mw^' .1^-^-
ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 95
probably a very long war indeed. Every
British officer or soldier with whom I have
talked has said that he expects that the spring
of 1916 will find them in virtually the same
positions that they have occupied for the past
year. They will gain ground in some places,
of course, and lose ground in others, but the
winter, to the men in the trenches beheve,
will see no radical alteration in the present
Western battle-Hnc. All this, of course, will not
make pleasant reading in England, where the
Government and certain sections of the Press
have given the people the impression that
Germany is already beaten to her knees and
that it is all over bar the shouting. Out along
the battle-front, however, in the trenches, and
around the camp-fires, you do not hear the
men discussing " the terms of peace we will
grant Germany," or " What shall we do with
the Kaiser ? " They are not talking much,
they are not sing:! g much, they are not boasting
at all, but they have settled down to the hercu-
lean task that lies before them with a grim
determination, a bull-dog tenacity of purpose,
which is eventually, I believe, going to prove
the deciding factor in the war. Nothing better
;i5-'
96
VIVE LA FRANCE
illustrates this spirit than the inscription which
I saw on a cross over a newly made grave in
Flanders :
TELL ENGLAND, YE THAT PASS THIS MONUMENT,
THAT WE WHO REST HERE DIED CONTENT.
ismmMME
III. CAMPAIGNING IN THE
VOSGES
THE sergeant in charge of the machine
gun, taking advantage of a lull in the
rifle-fire which had crackled and roared
along the trenches since dawn, was sprawled
on his back in the gun-pit, reading a magazine.
\\ hat attracted my attention was i».s being an
American magazine.
" Where did you learn to read Enghsh ? " I
asked him curiously.
" In America," said he.
" What part ? " said I.
" Schenectady," he answered. " Was with
the General Electric until the war began."
" I'm from up-State myself," I remarked.
" My people live in Syracuse."
" The hell you say ! " he exclaimed, scramb-
ling to his feet and grasping my hand cordially.
" I took you for an Enghshman. From
Syracuse, eh ? Why, that makes us sort of
neighbours, doesn't it ? We ought to have
a drink on it. I suppose the Boches have plenty
97 c
' ^iiT- ilCMr^ jk JTfc— — "^ -v ti . j^.„<fc.-
9S
VIVK LA FRANCK!
of beer over there," waving his hand in the
direction of the German trenches, of which I
could catch a glimpse through a loophole,
" but we haven't anything here but water.
I've got an idea, though ! Back in the States,
when they have those Old Home Week re-
unions, they always fire off an anvil or the town
cannon. So what's the matter with celebrating
this reunion by letting the Roches have a few
rounds from the machine gun ? "
Seating himself astride the bicycle saddle on
the trail of the machine gun. he swung the lean
barrel of the wicked little weapon until it
rested on the German trenches a hundred
yards away. Then he slipped tlie end of 1
cartridge-carrier into the breech.
"Three rousing cheers for the U.S.A.!"
he shouted, and pressed a button. Rrr-r-r-r-
f-r-r-T-r-r-T-r-r-r-r-r-T-r-r-r-rrrip went the mi-
trailleuse, with the noise of a million mowing
machines. Flame spurted from its muzzle as
water spurts from the nozzle of a fire-hose.
The racket in the log-roofed gun-pit was ear-
shattering. The blast of bullets spattered the
German trenches, they pinged metallically
against the steel plates set in the embrasures,
*vift^itfSia!ftiiiT"'^^sg&A'>-^K^'^-'ii^g^jMaBaB«^^
>L^„ He*.:., iml^Mhj^ .^ftSm^
#?,
1 rciuh ticiu iiL^
I.
•TV:^.' --^r; il^'»» 5??: SB* X«'.
Mm
'Ji . jai5«^*piaBr5r-;D!iiN:
^ivWil tmmi^^sS.Mj»^ 'MfM^j^M
It i
-x^p'SiiFmaBiigssmK
f*
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 99
thc-y kicked up countless spurts of yellow
earth The sergeant stood up, grinning, and
with a grimy handkerchief wiped from his face
the powder stains and pcr-piration.
" If you should happen to be in Schenectady
you might drop in at the General Electric plant
and tell the boys-" he began, but the sentence
was never finished, for just then a shell whined
low above our heads and burst somewhere be-
hind the trenches with the roar of an exploding
powder-mill. We had disturbed the Germans
afternoon siesta, and their batteries were show-
ing their resentment.
" I think that perhaps I'd better be moving
along," said I hastily. '' It's getting on toward
dinner-time." u \ a
" Well, s'long," said he regretfully. And
say " he called after me, " when you get back
lo little old New York would you mind dropping
into the Knickerbocker and having a drink
for me ? And be sure and give my regards to
Broadway."
" I certainly will," said I.
And that is how a Franco-American whose
name I do not know, sergeant in a French hne
regiment whose number I may not mention,
' *'. L.I ."/i^ . ■ ■ *_ r ' •_ . „._
yTTTi^TZr^
uVf VKawTTA i ^mf/t-i:im^ii*'k^:w^^
lOO
VIVE LA FRANCE !
and I held an Old Home Week celebration of
our own In the French trenches in Alsace.
For all I know there may have been some other
residents of central New York over in the
German trenches. If so, they made no at-
tempt to join out Httle reunion. Had they
done so they would have received a very warm
reception.
There were several reasons why I welcomed
the opportunity offered me by the French
General Staff to see the fighting in Alsace. In
the first place a veil of secrecy had been thrown
over the operations in that region, and the
mysterious is always alluring. Secondly, most
of the fighting that I have seen has been cither
in flat or only moderately hilly countries, and
I was curious to see how warfare is conducted
in a region as mountainous and as heavily
forested as the Adirondacks or Oregon. Again,
the Alsace sector is at the extreme southern
end of that great battle-line, more than four
hundred miles long, which stretches its unlovely
length across Europe from the North Sea to
the Alps, like some monstrous and deadly snake.
And lastly, I wanted to see the retaking of
In tl.c ri-..u. ii trcsutu-- iHi t! ■ \ ' r
.......1.. If.. 1... ..i.>t^.:i^M..i—-ii';-i"';t-' ':' '•;-
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES loi
that narrow strip of territory lying between
the summit of the Vosges and the Rhine
which for more than forty years has been
mourned by France as one of her " lost pro-
vinces."
This land of Alsace is, in many respects
the most beautiful that I have ever seen.
Strung along the horizon, Hke sentinels wrapped
in mantles of green, the peaks of the V^osgcs
loom against the sky. On the slopes of the
ridges, massed in their black battalions, stand
forests of spruce and pine. Through peaceful
valleys silver streams meander leisurely, and in
the meadows which border them cattle stand
knve-deep amid the lush green grass. The
villages, their tortuous, cobble-paved streets
lined on either side by dim arcades, and the old,
old houses, with their turrets and balconies and
steep-pitched pottery roofs, give you the feel-
ing that they are not real, but that they are
scenery on a stage, and this illusion is height-
ened by the men in their jaunty berets and
wooden sabots, and the women, whose huge
black silk head-dresses accentuate the freshness
of their complexions. It is at once a region
of ruggedness and majesty and grandeur, of
,o2 VIVE LA FRANCE !
quaintness and simplicity and charm. As I
motored through it, it was hard to make my-
self believe that death was abroad in so fair
a land, and that over there, on the other side
of those near-by hills, men were engaged in
the business of wholesale slaughter. I was
brought to an abrupt reahzation of it, however,
as we were passing through the old grey town
of Gcrardner. I heard a sudden outcry, and
the streets, which a moment before had been
a-bustle with the usual market-day crowd,
were all at once deserted. The people dived
into their houses as a woodchuck dives into
its hole. The sentries on duty in front of the
Etat-Major were staring upward. High in the
sky, approaching with the speed of an express
train, was what looked like a great white sea-
gull, but which, from the silver sheen of its
armour-pined body, I knew to be a German
Taube. " We're in for another bombardment,"
remarked an officer. "The German airmen
have been visiting us every day of late." As
the aircraft swooped lower and nearer, a field-
gun concealed on the wooded hillside above the
town spoke sharply, and a moment later there
appeared just below the Taube a sudden splotch
■t-'^r-
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGFS 103
of white, like one of those powder-puffs that
women carry. From the opposite side of the
town another anti-aircraft gun began to bar^
defiance, until soon the aerial intruder was
ringed about by wisps of fleecy smoke. At one
tine I counted as many as forty of them, look-
ing like white tufts on a coverlet of turquoise
blue. Things were getting too hot for the
German, and with a beautiful sweep he swung
about, and went sailing down the wind, con-
tent to wait until a more favourable oppor-
tunity should offer.
The inhabitants of these Alsatian towns
hive become so accustomed to visits from
German airmen that they pay scarcely more
a-tention to them than they do to thunder-
storms, going indoors to avoid the bombs
^ust as they go indoors to avoid the rain.
I remarked, indeed, as I motored through the
country, that nearly every town through which
we passed showed evidences, either by scat-
tered roofs or shrapnel-spattered walls, of
aeroplane bombardment. Thus is the war
brought home to those who, dwelUng many
miles from the line of battle, might naturally
suppose themselves safe from harm. In thooc
104
VIVE LA FRANCE !
towns which arc within range of the German
guns the inhabitants arc in double danger,
yet the shops and schools are open, and the
townspeople go about their business appar-
ently wholly unmindful of the possibility that
a shell may drop in on them at any moment.
In St. Die we stopped for lunch at the Hotel
Terminus, which is just opposite the railway
station. St. Die is within easy range of ;he
German guns — or was when I was there — and
when the Germans had nothing better to co
they shelled it, centring their fire, as is their
custom, upon the railway station, so as to in-
terfere as much as possible with traffic and the
movement of troops. The station and the
adjacent buildings looked like cardboard boxes
in which with a lead-pencil somebody had
jabbed many ragged holes. The hotel, despite
its upper floor having been wrecked by shell-
{i'"e only a few days pre\Tously, was open and
doing business. Ranged upon the mantel ot
the dining-room was a row of German 77-milli-
UKtre shells, polished until you could see your
face in them. " VVTiere did you get those ? "
I asked the woman who kept the hotel. " Those
are some German shells that fell in the garden
r--?5?'«f»cg;.£ ^s^Sfc-aBPiK--
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 105
during the last bombardment, and didn't
explode," she answered carelessly. " I had
them unloaded — the man who did it made
an awful fuss about it, too — and I use them
for hot-water bottles. Sometimes it gets pretty
cold here at night, and it's very comforting
to have a nice hot shell in your bed."
From St. Die to Le Rudlin, where the road
ends, is in the neighbourhood of thirty miles,
and we did it in not much over thirty minutes.
We went so fast that the telegraph-poles looked
like the palings in a picket fence, and we took
the corners on two wheels — doubtless to save
rubber. Of one thing I am quite certain : if I
am killed in this war, it is not going to be by
a shell or a bullet ; it is going to be in a mili-
tary motor-car. No cars save military ones
are permitted on the roads in the zone of
operations, and for the military cars no speed
Umits exist. As a result, the drivers tear
through the country as though they were
running speed-trials at Brooklands. Sometimes,
of course, a wheel comes off, or they meet
another vehicle when going round a corner at
full speed — and the next morning there is a
mihtary funeral. To be the driver of a military
io6
VIVE LA FRANCE !
car in the zone of operations is the joy-rider^s
dream come true. The soldier who drove my
car steered with one hand because he had to
use the other to illustrate the stories of his ex-
ploits in the trenches. Despite the fact that
wc were on a mountain road, one side of which
dropped away into nothingness, when he re-
lated the story of how he captured six Germans
single-handed he took both hands oflF the wheel
to tell about it. It would have made Barney
Oldfield's hair permanently pompadour.
At Le Rudlin, where there is an outpost of
Alpine chasseurs, we left the car, and mounted
mules for the ascent of the Hautes Chaumes, or
High M< ors, which crown the summit of the
Vosges. Along this ridge ran the imaginary
line which Bismarck made the boundary be-
tween Germany and France. Each mule was
led by a soldier, whose short blue tunic, scarlet
breeches, blue puttees, rakish blue brret, and
rifle slung hunter-fashion across his back, made
him look uncommonly like a Spanish brigand,
while another soldier hung to the mule's tail to
keep him on the path, which is as narrow and
slippery as the path of virtue. Have you ever
ridden the trail which leads from the rim of the
v^-i»r jsa^- Lm!Kaai^f»''^^f^: *:
zw^smsmf^s. \ sw^-'/Tiw--
W'h.ii tlic Cicrm-m. JiJ to ihc Jiur>.h .u Rilicvourt
»l
Ik --
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 107
Grand Canyon down to the Colorado ? Yes ?
Well, the trail which we took up to the HauUs
Chaumes was in places like that, only more so.
Yet over that and similar trails has passed an
army of invasion, carrying with it, either on
the bacb of mules or on the backs of men, its
guns, food, and ammunition, and sending back
in like fashion its wounded. Reaching the
summit, the trail debouched from the dense
pine forest on to an open, v^^nd-swept moor.
Dotting the backbone of the ridge, far as the
eye could see, ran a line of low stone boundary
posts. On one side of each post was carved
the letter F. On the other, the eastern face,
was the letter D. Is it necessary to say that
F stood for France and D for Deutschland .*
Squatting beside one of the posts was a French
soldier busily engaged with hammer and chisel
in cutting away the I). " It will not be needed
again," he explained, grinning.
Leaving the mules in the shelter of the wood,
we proceeded across the open tableland which
crowns the summit of thj ridge on foot, for,
being now within botli sight and range of the
German batteries, there seemed no object in
attracting more attention to ourselves than was
loS
VIVE LA FRANCE !
absolutely necessary. Half a mile or so beyond
the boundary posts the plateau suddenly fell
away in a sheer precipice, a thin screen of bushes
bordering its brink. The topo^-raphical officer
who had assumed the direction of the expedi-
tion at Le Rudlin motioned me to come for-
ward. '* Have a look," said he, " but be careful
not to show yourself or to .'hake the bushes,
or the Bodies may send us a shell." Cau-
tiousi;- 1 peered through an opening in the
branches. The mountain slope below me,
almost at the foot of the cliff on which I stood,
was scarred across by two great undulating
yellow ridges. In places they were as much as a
thousand yards apart, in others barely ten. I
did not need to be told what they were. I
knew. The ridge higher up the slope marked
the line of the FrenJi trenches; the lower that
of the German. From them came an incessant
crackle and splutter which sounded Uke a forest
fire. Sometimes it would die down until only
an occasional shot would punctuate the moun-
tain silence, and then, apparently without
cause, it would rise into a clatter which sounded
like an army of carpenters shingUng a roof. In
the forests on either side of us batteries were
rr^l..
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 109
at work steadily, methodically, and, though wc
could not sec the guns, the frequent fountains
of earth thrown up along both lines of trenchc?
by bursting shells showed how heavy was the
bombardment that was in progress, and how
accurate was both the French and German fire.
We were watching what the official communiqui'
described the next day as the fighting on the
Fecht very much as one would watch a
football game from the upper row of seats at
the Oval. Above the forest at our right
swayed a French observation balloon, tugging
impatiently at its rope, while the observer,
glasses glued to his eyes, telephoned to the
commander of the battery in the wood below
him where his shells were hitting. Suddenly,
from the French position just below me, there
rose, high above the duotonc of rifle and
artillery fire, the shrill clatter of a quick-firer.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat it went, for all the world
hke one of those machines which they use for
riveting steel girders. And, when you come to
think about it, that is what it was doing : rivet-
ing the bonds which bind Alsace to France.
I have heard it said that the French army
has been opposed, and in many instances be-
■:^:J2?'-^.'
I lO
VIVE LA FRANCE !
trayed, by the people whom they thought they
were Hberating from the German yoke, and that
consequently the feeling of the French soldiers
for the Alsatians is very bitter. This assertion
is not true. I talked with a great many people
during my stay ia Alsace — with the maires of
towns, with shopkeepers, with peasant farmers,
and with village priests — and I found that they
welcomed the French as whole-heartedly as a
citizen who hears a burglar in his house wel-
comes a policeman. I saw old men and women
who had dwelt in Alsace before the Germans
came, and who had given up all hope of seeing
the beloved tricolour flying again above Alsatian
soil, standing at the doors of their cottages,
with tears coursing down their cheeks, while the
endless columns of soldiery in the familiar
uniform tramped by. In the schoolhouses of
Alsace I saw French soldiers patiently teaching
children of French blood, who have been born
under German rule and educated under
German schoolmasters, the meaning of " Liberti',
EgaliU\ Fraternitt',** and that p-a-t-r-i-e spells
France.
The change from Teutonic to Gallic rule is,
however, by no means welcomed by all
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES in
Alsatians. The Alsatians of to-day, remember,
are not the Alsatians of 1870. It has been the
consistent policy of the German Government
to encourage, and where necessary, to assist
German farmers to settle in Alsace, and as the
years passed and the old hatred died down,
these newcomers intermarried with the old
French stock, so that to-day there are thousands
of the younger generation in whose veins
flow both French and German blood, and who
scarcely know themselves to whom their
allegiance belongs. As a result of this peculiar
condition, both the French and German
mihtary authorities have to be constantly on
their guard against treachery, for a woman
bearing a French name may well be of German
birth, while a man who speaks nothing but
German may, neverthelesss, be of pure French
extraction. Hence spies, both French and
German, abound. If the French Intelligence
Department is well served, so is that of
Germany. Peasants working in the fields, petty
tradesmen in the towns, women of social
position, and other women whose virtue is as
easy as an old shoe, Germans dressed as priests,
as hospital attendants, as Red Cross nurses.
112
\'I\ E LA FRANCE !
sometimes in French uniforms and travelling
in motor-cars with all the necessary papers
all help to keep the German mihtary authori-
ties informed of what is going on behind the
French lines. Sometimes they signal by means
of lamps, or by raising and lowering the shade
of a hghted room of some lonely farmhouse ;
sometimes by means of cunningly concealed
telephone wires ; occasionally by the fashion
in which the family washing is arranged upon
a line within range of German telescopes,
innocent-looking red-flan:ed petticoats, blue-
linen blouses, and white undergarments being
used instead of signal-flags to spell out messages
in code. A plough with a white or grey horse
has more than once indicated the position of
a French battery to the German airmen. The
movements of a flock of sheep, driven by a spy
disguised as a peasant, has sometimes given
similar information. On one occasion three
German officers in a motor-car managed to get
right through the Brirish lines in Flanders.
Two of them were disguised as French officers,
who were supposed to be bringing back the
third as a prisoner, he being, of course, in
German uniform. So clever and daring was
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 113
their scheme that they succeeded in getting
close to British Headquarters before they were
detected and captured. They are no cowards
who do this sort of work. They know perfectly
well what it means if they are caught : sun-
rise, a wall, and a firing-party.
From the Hautes Chaumes we descended by
a very steep and perilous psth to the Lac Noir,
where a battalion of Alpine cnasseurs had built
a cantonment at which we spent the night.
The Lac Noir, or Black Lake, occupies the
crater of an extinct volcano, whose rocky sides
are so smooth and steep that it looks like a
gigantic washtub, in which a weary Hercules
might wash the clot' *ng of the world. There
were in the neighbourhood of a thousand
chasseurs in camp on the shores of the Lac Noir
when I was there, the chef de brigade having
been, until the beginning of the war, military
adviser to the President of China. The
amazing democracy of the French army was
illustrated by the fact that his second in com-
mand, Lieutenant-Colonel Messimy, was, until
the change of Cabinet which took place after the
battle of the Marne, Minister of War. The
cantonment — ''*' Black Lake City " Colonel
114
VIVE LA FRANCE !
Messimy jokingly called it — looked far more
like a summer camp in the Adirondack than
a soldiers' camp in Alsace. All the buildings
were of logs, their roofs being covered with
masses of green boughs to conceal their rom
inquisitive aeroplanes, and at the back ot each
hut, hollowed from the mountainside, was an
underground shelter in which the men could
take refuge in case of bombardment. Gravelled
paths, sometimes bordered with flowers, wound
amid the pine-trees ; the officers' quarters
had broad verandas, with ingeniously made
rustic furniture upon them ; the mess-tables
were set under leafy arbours ; there was a
swimming-raft and a diving-board, and a sort
of rustic pavilion known as the " Casino,"
where the men passed their spare hours in play-
ing cards or danced to the music of a really
excellent band. Over the doorway was a sign
which read : " The music of the tambourine
has been replaced by the music of the cannon.'*
Though the Lac Noir was, when I was there,
within the French lines, it was within range of
the German batteries, which shelled it almost
daily. The slopes of the crater on which the
cantonment was built are so steep, however.
fi". n
^Jt'^^.-rr.
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 115
that the shells would miss the barracks alto-
gether, dropping harmlessly in the middle of
the little lake. The ensuing explosion would
stun hundreds of fish, which would float upon
the surface of the water, whereupon the
soldiers would paddle out in a rickety flatboat
and gather them in. In fact, a German bom-
bardment came to mean that the chasseurs
would have fish for dinner. This daily bom-
bardment, which usually began just before
sunset, the French called the " Evening
Prayer." The first shot was the signal for the
band to take position on that shore of the lake
which could not be reached by the German
shells, and play the MarseillaUe, a bit of irony
which afforded huge amusement to the French
and excessive irritation to the Germans.
When the history of the campaign in the
Vosges comes to be written, a gtreat many
pages will have to be devoted to recounting
the exploits of the chasseurs alpins. The
" Blue Devils," as the Germans have dubbed
them, are the Highlanders of the French army,
being recruited from the French slopes of the
Alps and he Pyrenees. Tough as rawhide,
keen as razors, hard as nails, they are the ideal
r^ , •■ mxr- ^&'. 'Z-'
ii6
VIVE LA FRANCE !
troops for mountain warfare. They wear a
distinctive dark-blue uniform, and the beret, or
cap, of the French Alps, a flat-topped, jaunty
head-dress which is brother to the tam-o'-
shanter. The frontier of Alsace, from a point
opposite Strasburg to a point opposite Miil-
hausen, follows the summit of the Vosges,
and over this range, which in places is upward
of four thousand feet in height, have poured
the French armies of invasion. In the van of
those armies have marched the chasseurs alpins,
dragged their guns by hand up the almost
sheer precipices, and dragging the gun-mules
after them ; advancing through forests so dense
that they had to chop paths for the line regi-
ments which followed them ; carrying by storm
the apparently impregnable positions held by
the Germans ; sleeping often without blankets
and with the mercury hovering near zero
on the heights which they had captured ; taking
their batteries into positions where it was be-
lieved no batteries could go ; raining shells
from those batteries upon the wooded slopes
ahead, and, under cover of that fire, advancing,
always advancing. Think of what it meant
to get a great army over such a mountain
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 117
range in the face of desperate opposition ;
think of the labour involved in transporting the
enormous supplies of food, clothing, and am*
munition required by that army ; think of
the suflFerings of the wounded who had to be
taken back across those mountains, many of
them in the depths of winter, sometimes in
litters, sometimes lashed to the backs of mules.
The mule, whether from the Alps, the Pyrenees,
or from Missouri, is playing a brave part in
this mountain warfare, and whenever I saw
one I felt like the motorist who, after his
automobile had been hauled out of an appar-
ently bottomless Southern bog by a negro
who happened to be passing with a mule team,
said to his son : " My boy, from now on always
raise your hat to a mule."
Just as the crimson disk of the sun peered
cautiously over the crater's rim, we bade
good-bye to our friends the chasseurs alpins,
and turned the noses of our mules up the
mountains. As we reached the summit of
the range, the little French captain who was
acting as our guide halted us with a gesture.
" Look over there," he said, pointing to
where, far beyond the trench-scarred hillsides,
ilS
VIVE LA FRANCE !
a great, broad valley was swimming in the
morning mists. There were green squares
which I knew for meadow-lands, and yellow
squares which were fields of ripening grain ;
here and there were clusters of white-walled,
red-roofed houses, with ancient church-spires
rising above them ; and winding down the
middle of the plain was a broad grey ribbon
which turned to silver when the sun struck
upon it.
" Look," said the little captain again, and
there was a break in his voice. *' That is what
we are fighting for. That is Alsace."
Then I knew that I was looking upon what
is, to every man of Gallic birth, the Promised
Land ; I knew that the great, dim bulk which
loomed against the distant skyline was the
Black Forest ; I knew that somewhere up that
mysterious, alluring valley, Strasburg sat, like
an Andromeda waiting to be freed ; and that
the broad, si lent -flowing river which I saw
below me was none other than the Rhine.
And as I looked I recalled another scene, on
another continent and beside another river,
two years before. I was standing with a
coloured cavalry sergeant of the border patrol
CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 119
on the banks of the Rio Grande, and we were
looking southward to where the mountains of
Chihualiua rose, purple, mysterious, forbidding,
grim, against the evening sky. On the Mexican
side of the river a battle was in progress.
" I suppose," I remarked to my compamon,
" that you'll be mighty glad when orders come
to cross the border and clean things up over
there in Mexico."
" Mistah," he answered earnestly, " we ain't
ncvah gwine tuh cross dat bodah, but one of
these yere days wese a gwine tuh pick dat
bodah up an' carry it right down to Panama."
And that is what the French are doing in
Alsace. They have not crossed the border, but
they have picked the border up, and are
carrying it right down to the banks of the
Rhine.
IV. THE RETAKING OF ALSACE
WHEN I asked the general commanding
the armies operating in Alsace for
permission to visit the fire-trenches,
I did it merely as a matter of form. I was quite
prepared to be met with a polite but firm re-
fusal, for it is as difficult to get into the French
trenches as it is to get behind the scenes of a
West Knd theatre on the first night of a big
production. This, understand, is not from any
sohcitude for your safety, but because a fire-
trench is usually a very busy place indeed, and
a visitor is apt to get in the way and make him-
self a nuisance generally. Imagine my as-
tonishment, then, when the general said,
" Certainly, if you wish," just as though he
were giving me permission to visit his stables
or his gardens. I might add that almost every
correspondent who has succeeded in getting to
the French front has been taken, with a vast
deal of ceremony and precaution, into a trench
of some sort, thus giving him an experience to
tell about all the rest of his life, but tho^e who
IZO
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 121
have been permitted to visit the actual fire-
trenches might almost be numbered on one's
fingers. In this respect the French have been
much less accommodating than the Belgians or
the Germans. The fire, or first-line, trench, is
the one nearest the enemy, and both from it
and again * it there is almost constant firing.
The difference between a second-Une, or reserve
trench, and a fire-trench is the difference be-
tn-ien siiitng in a comfortable orchestra stall and
in being on the stage and a part of the show.
Before they took me out to the trenches
we lunched in Dannemarie, or, as it used to
be known under German rule, Dammerkirch.
Though the town was within easy range of the
German guns, and was shelled by them on oc-
casion, the motto of the townsfolk seemed to
be " business as usual," for the shops were busy
and the schools were open. We had lunch at
the local inn : it began with fresh lobster,
followed by omeUtU au Jromage, spring lamb,
and asparagus, and ended with strawberries,
and it cost me half a crown, wine included.
From which you will gather that the people
behind the French lines are not suffering for
food.
It !
122
VI\ F LA FkANCE !
Just outside Danncmaric the railway crosses
the Kivcr 111 by three tremendous viaducts
eighty feet in height. \\ hen, early in the war,
the Germans fell back before the impetuous
French advance, they effectually stopped rail-
way traffic by blowing up one of these viaducts
behind them. Urged by the railway company,
whicli preferred to have the (iovernmcnt foot
the bill, the viaduct was rebuilt by the French
military authorities, and a picture of the cere-
mony which marked its inauguration by the
Minister of War was pubHshed in one of the
Paris illustrated papers. The jubilation of the
French was a trifle premature, however, for a
few days later the Germans moved one of their
monster siege-guns into position and, at a range
of eighteen miles, sent over a shell which again
put the viaduct out of commission. That
explains, perhaps, why the censorship is so strict
on pictures taken in the zone of operations.
Dannemarie is barely ten miles from that
point where the French and German trenches,
after zigzagging across more than four hundred
miles of European soil, come to an abrupt end
against the frontier of Switzerland. The Swiss,
who are taking no chances of having the viola-
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 123
tion of Belgium repeated with their own
country for the victim, have at this point massed
a heavy force of cxtrcmly businesslike-looldng
troops, the frontier is marked by a line of wire
entanglements, and a military zone has been
established, civilians not being permitted to
approach witliin a mile or more oi the border.
\\ hen I was in that region the French officers
gave a dinner to the officers in command of the
Swiss frontier force opposite them. That there
might be no embarrassing breaches of neu-
trality the table was set exactly on the inter-
national boundary, so that the Swiss officers sat
in Switzerland, and the French officers sat in
France. One of the amusing incidents of the
war was when the French " put one over " on
the Germans at the beginning of hostilities in
this region. Taking advantage of a sharp angle
in the contour of the Swiss frontier, the French
posted one of their batteries in such a posi-
tion, that though it could sweep the German
trenches, it was so close to the border that
whenever the German guns replied their shells
fell on Swiss soil, and an international incident
was created.
The trenches in front of Altkirch, and indeed
tl
124
VIVE LA FRANCE !
throughout Alsace, are flanked by patches of
dense woods, and it is in these woods that the
cantonments for the men are bailt, and amid
their leafy recesses that the soldiers spend their
time when off duty in sleeping, smoking, and
card-playing. Though the German batteries
periodically rake the woods with shell-fire, it is
an almost total waste of ammunition, for the
men simply retreat to the remarkable under-
ground cities which they have constructed, and
stay there until the shell-storm is over. The
troglodyte habitations which have come into
existence along the entire length of the western
battle-front are perhaps the most curious pro-
ducts of this siege warfare. In these dwellings
burrowed out of the earth the soldiers of trance
live as the cavemen lived before the dawn of
civihzaiion. A dozen to twenty feet below the
surface of the ground, and so stronglv roofed
over with logs and eartii as to render their oc-
cupants safe from the most torrential rain of
high explosive, I was shown rooms with sleep-
ing-quarters for a hundred men apiece, black-
^nlith^' and carpenter-' shops, a recreation-room
where the men lounged and smoked and read
the papers and wrote to the folks at home, a
^«&i<wf^-^^
i)t ti (.• irrn- Iks iicir Nifiiport
i»-TBH?s^^i£Siriv- il-i
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 125
telegraph station, a telephone exchange from
which one could talk with any section of the
trenches, witli division headquarters, or with
Paris ; a bathing establishment with hot and
cold water and shov/er-baths ; a barber's shop —
all with bijard floors, free from dampness, and
surprisingly clean. The trenches and passage-
ways connecting these underground dwellings
were named and marked like city streets — the
Avenue JofTre, the Avenue Foch, the Rue des
Victoires — and many of them were lighted by
electricity. The bedroom of an artillery officer,
twenty feet underground, had its walls and ceil-
ing covered with flowered cretonne — heaven
knows where he got it ! — and the tiny windows
of the division commander's headquarters,
though they gave only on a wall of yeiiow mud,
were himg with dainty muslin curtains —
evidently the work of a woman's loving fingers.
In one place a score of steps led down to a
passage-way whose mud walls were so close
toirethcr that I brushed one with either elbow
as I passed. On this subterranean corridcjr
doors — real doors — opened. One of these doors
led into an officer's sitting-room. The floor
and walls were covered with planed wood and
126
VIVE LA FRANCE
A
there was even an attempt at polish. The
rustic furniture was excellently made. Beside
the bed was a telephone and an electric-light,
and on a rude table was a brass shell-case filled
with wild flowers. On the walls the occupant
had tacked pictures of his wife and children
in a pitiful attempt to make this hole in the
ground look "homeHke."
But don't get the idea, from anything that I
have said, that life in the trenches is anything
more than endurable, 'i wo words describe it :
misery and muck. War is not only fighting, as
many people seem to think. Bronchitis is more
deadly than bullets. Pneumonia does more
harm than poison-gas. Shells are less dangerous
than lack of sanitation. To be attacked by
strange and terrible diseases ; to stand day after
day, week after week, between walls of oozy
mud and amid seas of slime ; to be eaten aUvc
by vermin ; to suffer the intolerable irritation
of the itch ; to be caked with mud and filth ;
to go for weeks and perhaps for months with no
opportunity to bathe ; to be so foul of person
that you are an offence to all who come near-
such are the real horrors of the trench.
^ et, when the circumstances are taken into
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 127
consideration, the French soldier is admirably
cared for. His health is carefully looked after.
He is well fed, well clothed, and, following
the policy of conserving by every possible
means the lives of the men, he is afforded
every protection that human ingenuity can
devise. The kepi has been replaced by the
trench-helmet, a light casque of blued steel,
which will protect a man's brain-pan from
shell-splinter, shrapnel, or grenade, and which
has saved many a man's life. Rather a re-
markable thing, is it not, that the French
soldier of to-day should adopt a head-dress
almost identical with the casque worn by his
ancestor, the French man-at-arms of the Middle
Ages ? I am convinced that it is this policy of
conserving the lives of her fighting-men which
is going to win the war for France. If necessity
demands that a position be taken with the
bayonet, no soldiers in the world sacrifice them-
selves more freely than the French, but the
military authorities have realized that men,
unlike shells, cannot be replaced. " The dura-
tion and the outcome of the vsar," General de
Maud'huy remarked to me, " depend upon
how fast we can kill off the Germans. Their
128
VIVE LA FRANCE !
army has reached its maximum strength, anc
every day sees it slowly but surely weakening
Our game, therefore, is to kill as many as pos-
sible of the enemy while at the same time
saving our own men. It is, after all, a pureiv
mathematical proposition,"
I believe that the losses incidental to trench
warfare, as it is being conducted in Alsace,
have been considerably exaggerated. The
officer in command of the French positions in
front of Altkirch told me that, during the
construction of some of the trenches, the
Germans rained twelve thousand shells upon
the working parties, yet not a man wa? killed
and only ten were wounded. The modern
trench is so ingeniously constructed that, even
in the comparatively rare event of a shell
dropping squarely into it, only the soldiers in
the immediate vicinity, seldom more than
half a dozen at the most, are injured, the others
being protected from the flying steel by the
traverses, earthen wails which partially inter-
sect the trench at intervals of a few yards.
In the trench one has only to keep one's head
down, and he is nearly as safe as though he
were at home. To crouch, to move bowed.
.-•i:i.'e«A:)-S?» ."js»
mmmm^imm^mmm
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 129
always to keep the parapet between your head
and the German riflemen, becomes an instinct,
hkc the lock-step which used to be the rule for
the convicts at Sing Sing.
So cleverly have the French engineers taken
advantage of the configuration of the country
in front of Altkirch, that we were able to enter
the boyaux, or communication trenches, without
Icavin^^ the shelter of the wood. I lalf an hour's
brisk walking through what would, in times of
peace, be called a ditch, perhaps three feet
wide and seven deep, its earthen walls kept
in place by wattles of woven willows, and with
a? many twists and turns as the maze at
1 lampton Court, brought us at last into the fire-
trenches. These were considerably roomier
than the boyaux, being in places six feet wide
and having a sort of raised step or platform of
earth, on which the men stood to fire, running
along the side nearest the enemy. Each soldier
was protected by a steel shield about the size
f a newspaper, and painted a lead-grey, set
in the earth of the parapet. In the centre of
the shield is cut an opening sHghtly larger than
a playing-card, through which the soldier
pokes his rifle when he wishes to fire, and which,
o
»3o
\'I\'E LA FRANCE !
when not in use, is screened by a steel shutter
or a cloth curtain, so that the riflemen in the
German trench cannot sec anyone who may
happen to pass behind it. At intervals of five
or six yards men were on watch, with their
rifles laid. Their instructions arc never to
take their eyes off the enemy's trenches, a
shout from them bringing their comrades
tumbhng out of their dug-outs just as firemen
respond to the clang of the fire-bell. W hen
the men come rushing out of the shelters they
have, in the earth platform, a good steady
footing which vill bring their heads level with
the parapet, where their rifles, leaning against
the steel shields, await them. It is planned
always to keep a sufficient force in the fire-
trenches, so that, roughly speaking, there will
be a man to every yard, which is about as dose
as they can fight to advantage. Every thirty
yards or so, in a log-roofed shelter known as
a gun-pit, is a machine gun, though in the
German trenches it is not at all uncommon to
find a machine gun to every fifteen men.
As we passed through thr trenches I noticed
at intervals of a hundred yards or so men,
standing motionless as statues, who seemed to
THF RETAKING OF ALSACF. ,3,
be intently listening. And that, I found, was
precisely what they were doing. In this trench
warfare men are specially told of! to listen, both
above and beneath the ground, for any sapping
or mining operations on the part of the enemy.
Without this precaution there would be the
constant danger of the Germans driving a
tunnel under the French trenches (or vice
ver .i) and, by means of a mine, blowing those
trenches and the men in them into the air.
Indeed, scarcely a night passes that soldiers,
armed with knives and pistols, do not crawl
out on hands and knees between the trenches
in order to find out, by holding the ear to the
ground, whether tlie enemy is sapping. Should
the listener hear the muffled sounds which
would suggest that the enemy was driving a
mine, he tells it in a wlu'sper to his companion,
who crawls back to his own trenches ^vith the
mt-ssage. whereupon the engineers immediately
take >teps to start a counter-mine.
" Look through here," said the intelligence
officer who wa> acting as my guide, indicating
the porthole in one of the steel shields, " but
don't stay too long or a German sharpshooter
may spot you. A second is long enough to
^11
•32
MVK l.\ FkANCK!
ir
get a bullet through the brain." Cautiously
applying my eye to the opening, I saw, per-
haps a hundred yards away, a long, low
mound of earth, such as would be thrown up
from a sewer excavation, and dotting it at
three-foot intervals darker patches which I
knew to be just such steel shields as the one
behind which I was sheltered. And I knew
that behind each one of those steel shields
was standing a keen-eyed rifleman searching
for something suspicious at which to fire. Im-
mediately in front of the German trench, just
as in frtmt of the trench in which I stood, a
forest of stout stakes had been driven deep
into the ground, and draped between these
stakes were countless strands of barbed wire,
so snarled and tangled, and interlaced and
woven that a cat could not have got through
unscratched. Between the two lines of entan-
glements stretched a field of ripening wheat,
streaked here and there with patches of scarlet
poppies. There were doubtless other things
besides poppies amid that wheat, but, thank
Clod it waslii^h enough to hide them. Rising
from the wheatfield, almost midway between
the French and German lines, was a solitary
niK RKTAKINC; OF Al.SACi: 133
applc-trcc. " Behind that tree," whispered the
officer standing beside me — for some reason
they always speak in hushed tones in the
trenches — "is a German outpost. He crawls
out every morning before sunrise and is re-
heved at dark. Though some of our men keep
tlieir rifies constantly laid on the tree, we've
never been able to get him. Still, he's not a
very good life-insurance risk, eh ? " And I
agreed that he certainly was not.
I must have remained at my loophole a Httlc
too long or possibly some movement of mine
attracted the attention of a German sniper, for
pdn.1 came a bullet against the shield behind
which I was standing, with the same ringing,
metallic sound which a bullet makes when it
hits the iron target in a shooting-gallery. In
this case, however, / was the bull's eye. Had
that bullet been two inches nearer ♦he centre
there would have been, in the words of the poet,
" more work for the undertaker, another little
job for the casket-maker."
" Lucky for you that wasn't one of the new
armour-piercing bullets," remarked the officer
a>, I hastily stepped down. " After the Ger-
mans introduced the steel shields we went them
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134
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one better by introducing a jacketed bullet
which will go through a sheet of armour-plate
as though it were made of cheese. We get
lots of amusement from them. Sometimes one
of our men will fire a dozen rounds of ordinary
ammunition at a shield behind which he hears
some Bodies talking, and as the bullets glance
off harmlessly they laugh and jeer at him.
Then he shps in one of the jacketed bullets and
-^cfhang / ! /—we hear a wounded Boche yelp-
ing like a dog that has been run over by a
motor-car. Funny thing about the Germans.
They're brave enough— no one questions that
—but they scream like animals when they're
wounded."
; From all that I could gather, the French did
not have a particularly high opinion of the
quality of the troops opposed to them in
Alsace, most of whom, at the time I was there,
were Bavarians and Saxons. An officer in the
trenches on the Hartmannswillerkopf, where
the French and German positions were in places
very close together, told me that whenever the
Germans attempted an attack the French
trenches burst into so fierce a blast of rifle and
macliine-gun fire that the men in the spiked
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 135
helmets r used to face it. " Vorwarts ! Vor-
warts ! " the German officers would scream,
exposing themselves recklessly. "Nein ! N'ein !"
the fear-maddened men would answer as they
broke and ran for the shelter of their trenches.
Then the French would hear the angry bark
of automatics as the officers pistolled their
men.
When tlie French, in one of the bloodiest
and most desperate assaults of the war, carried
the summit of the Hartmannswillcrkopf by
storm, they claim to have found the German
machine-gun crews chained to their guns as
galley-slaves were chained to their oars. French
artillery officers have repeatedly told me that
when German infantry advance to take a
position by assault, the men are frequently
urged forward by their own batteries raking
them from the rear. As the German gunners
gradually advance their fire as the infantry
moves forward, it is as dangerous for the
men to retreat as to go on. Hence it
is by no means uncommon, so the French
officers assert, for the German troops to
arrive pell-mell at the French trenches,
breathless, terrified, hands above their heads,
:Ji
136
VIVE LA FRAxNCE !
seeking not a fight but a chance to sur-
render.
One of the assertions that you hear repeated
everywhere along the French Hnes, by officers
and men ahke, is that the German does not
fight fair, that you cannot trust liim, that he is
not bound by any of the recognized rules of the
game. Innumerable instances have been re-
lated to me of wounded Germans attempting
to shoot or stab the French surgeons and nurses
who were caring for them. An American
serving in the Foreign Legion told me that on
one occasion, when his regiment carried a
German position by assault, the wounded
Germans lying on the ground waited until the
legionaries had passed, and then shot them in
the back. Now, when the Foreign Legion goes
into action, each company is followed by men
with axes, whose business it is to see that such
incidents do not happen again.
The reason for the French soldier's deep-
seated distrust of the German is illustrated
by a grim comedy of which I heard when I was
in Alsace.
A company of German infantry was defend-
ing a stone-walled farmstead on the Fecht.
m?^;
In the trciutic, m Al-.uc
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'^^^r^fjcffm^
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THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 137
So murderous was the fire of the French bat-
teries that soon a white sheet was seen waving
from one of the farmhouse windows. The
French fire ceased, and through the gateway
came a group of Germans, holding their hands
above their heads and shouting : " Kamerad !
Kamerad ! " which has become the euphemism
for " I surrender." But when a detachment of
chasseurs went forward to take them prisoners
the Germans suddenly dropped to the ground,
while from an upper window in the farm-
house a hidden machine gun poured a stream
of lead into the unsuspecting Frenchmen.
Thereupon the French batteries proceeded to
transform that farmhouse into a sieve. In a
quarter of an hour the tablecloth was again
seen waving, the French guns again ceased
firing, and again the Germans came crowding
out, with their hands above their heads. But
this time they were stark naked ! To prove
that they had no concealed weapons they had
stripped to the skin. It is scarcely necessary
to add that those Germans were not taken
prisoners.
Though the incidents I have above related
were told me by officers who claimed to have
138
\IVE LA FRANCE!
witnessed them, and whose reliability I have
no reason to doubt, I do not vouch for them,
mind you ; I merely repeat them for what they
are worth.
I ha J, of course, heard many stories of the
German ranks being filled with boys and old
men, but the large convoys of prisoners which
I saw in Alsace and in Champagne convinced
me that there is but little truth in the assertion.
Some of the prisoners, it is true, looked as
though they should have been in high school,
and others as though they had been calle.. from
old soldiers' homes, but these formed only a
sprinkling of the whole. By far the greater
part of the prisoners that I saw were men
between eighteen and forty, and they all im-
pressed me as being in the very pink of physical
condition and this despite the fact that they
were dirty and hungry and very, very tired.
But they struck me as being not at all averse to
being captured. They seemed exhausted and
dispirited and crushed, as though all the fight
had gone out of them. In those long columns
of weary, dirty men were represented all
the Teutonic types : arrogant, supercilious
Prussians ; strapping young peasants from the
THE RKTAKING OF ALSACE 139
Silesian farm-lands ; tradesmen and mechanics
from the great industrial centres ; men from
the mines of \\ urtemberg and the forests of
Baden ; scowhng Bavarians and smiHng Saxons.
Among them were some brutish faces, accen-
tuated, no doubt, by the close-cropped hair
which makes any man look Hke a convict, but
the countenances of most of them were frank
and honest and open. Two things aroused my
curiosity. The first was that I did not see a
helmet — a pickelhaube — among them. When I
asked the reason they explained that they had
been captured in the fire-trenches, and that
they seldom wear their helmets there, as the
little round grey caps with the scarlet band are
less conspicuous and more comfortable. The
other thing that aroused my curiosity was when
I saw French soldiers, each with a pair of
scissors, going from prisoner to prisoner.
" U hat on earth are you doing ? " I asked.
" We are cutting the braces of the Boches,"
was the answer. "Their trousers are made
very large around the waist so that if their
bracks are cut they have to hold them up
with their hands, thus making it difficult for
them to run away."
rii
140
\1\K LA FRANCE!
As 1 looked at these unshaven, unkempt
men in their soiled and tattered uniforms, it
was hard to make myself believe that they
had been a part of that immaculate, confident,
and triumphant army which I had seen roll
across Belgium like a tidal wave in the late
summer of 1914.
Though the French and German positions
in Alsace are rarely less than a hundred yards
apart and usually considerably more, there is
one point on the line, known as La Fontcncllc,
where, owing to a peculiar rocky formation,
the French and German trenches are within six
yards of each other. The only reason one side
doL. not blow up the other by means of mines
is because the vein of rock which separates
them is too hard to tunnel through. In cases
when the trenches are exceptionally close
together, the men have the comfort of knowing
that they are at least safe from shell-fire,
for, as the battery commanders are perfectly
awaie that the sHghtest error in calculating the
range, or the least detcrioriation in the rifling of
the guns, would r( ^ult in their shells landing
among their own men, they generally play
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THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 141
sale and concentrate their fire on the enemy's
second-line trenches instead of on the first-
line. The fighting in these close-up positions
has consequently degenerated into a warfare
of bombs, hand-grenades, poison-gas, burning
oil, and other methods reminiscent of the
Middle Ages. As a protection against bombs
and hand-grenades, some of the trenches which
I visited had erected along their parapets
ten- foot-high screens of wire netting, hke the
back nets of tennis-courts.
In ♦his war the hand-grenade is king. Com-
pared with it the high-power rifle is a joke.
The grenadier regiments again deserve the
name. For cleaning out a trench or stopping
a massed charge there is nothing like a well-
aimed volley of hand-greandes. I beheve that
the total failure of the repeated German
attempts to break through on the western front
is due to three causes : the overwhelming
superiority of the French artillery ; the French
addiction to the use of the bayonet — for the
Germans do not like cold steel ; and to the
remarkable proficiency of the French in the
use of hand-gren*des. The grenade commonly
used by the French is of the " bracelet " type,
< -' - I«5^>r-:.
142
VIVE LA FRANCE !
consisting of a cast-iron ball filled with ex-
plosive. The thrower wears on his wrist a
leather loop or bracelet which is prolonged by
a piece of cord about a foot in length with an
iron hook at the end. Just before the grenade
is thrown, the hook is passed through the ring
of a friction-pin inside the firing-plug which
closes the iron ball. By a sharp backward
turn of the wrist when the grenade is thrown,
the ring, with the friction-pin held back by
the hook, is torn off, the grenade itself con-
tinuing on its brief journey of destruction.
The French also use a primed grenade attached
to a sort of wooden racket, which can be
quickly improvised on the spot, and which,
fiom its form, is popularly known as the
" hair-brush." To acquire proficiency in the
use of grenades requires considerable practice
for the novice who attempts to throw one of
these waspish-tempered missiles is as hkely to
blow up his comrades as he is the enemy. So
at various points along the front the French
have established bomb-throwing schools, under
competent instructors, where the soldiers are
taught the proper method of throwing grenades,
just as, at the winter training camps in America,
If i
I
!
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 143
candidates for the big leagues are taught the
proper method of throwing a baseball.
Some of the grenades are too large to be
thrown by hand and so they are hurled into
the enemy's trenches by various ingenious
machines designed for the purpose. There is,
for example, the sauterelU, a modern adapta-
tion of the ancient arbaHst, which can toss a
bomb the size of a nail-keg into a trench ninety
feet away. Mortars which did good service in
the days of Bertrand du Guesclin have been
unearthed from ancient citadels, and in the
trenches are again barking defiance at the
enemies of France. Because of their frog-
liKc appearance, the soldiers have dubbed them
crapouillots, and they are used for throwing
bombs of the horned variety, which look more
than anything else like snails pushing their
heads out of their shells. Still another type,
known as the taupia, consists merely of a
German 77-millimetre shell-case with a touch-
hole bored in the base so that it can be fired by
a match. This httle improvised mortar, whose
name was no doubt coined from the French
word for " mole " (taupe) as appropriate to
underground warfare throws a tin containing
» ,-
144
VIVE LA FRANCE !
If
two and a quarter pounds of high explosive for
a short distance with considerable accuracy.
Still another type of bomb is hurled from a
catapult, which does not diflFer materially from
those which were used at the siege of Troy.
Doubtless the most accurate and effective of
all the bombs used in this trench warfare is
the so-called air-torpedo, a cigar-shaped shell
about thirty inches long and weighing thirty-
three pounds, which is fitted with steel fins,
hke the feathers on an arrow and for the same
purpose. This projectile, which is fired from
a specially designed mortar, has an effective
range of five hundred yards and carries a
charge of high explosive sufficient to demohsh
everything within a radius of twenty feet.
Tens of thousands of these torpedoes of the air
were used during the French offensive in
Champagne and created terrible havoc in the
German trenches. But by far the most im-
posing of these trench projectiles is the great
air-mine, weighing two hundred and thirty-six
pounds and as large as a barrel, which is fired
from an 80-millimetre mountain gun with the
wheels removed and mounted on an oak plat-
form. In the case of both the air-torpedo and
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE ,45
the air-mine the projectile does not enter the
barrel of the gun from which it is fired, but is
attached to a tube which alone receives the
propulsive force. At first the various forms of
trench mortaTs—minenwerfer, the Germans call
them— were unsatisfactory because they were
not accurate ard could not be depended upon,
no one being quite sure whether the resulting
explosion was going to occur in the French
trenches or in the German. They have been
greatly improved, however, and though no
attempt has been made to give them velocity,
they drop their bombs with reasonable ac-
curacy. You can see them plainly as they end-
over-end toward you, like beer-bottles or beer-
br.rrils coming through the air.
Nor does this by any means exhaust the list
of killing devices which have been produced
by this war. There is, for example, the Httle,
insignificant-looking bomb with wire triggers
sticking out from it in aU directions, hke the
prickers on a horse-chestnut burr. These
bombs are thickly strewn over the ground be-
tween the trenches. If the enemy attempts to
charge across that ground some soldier is
almost certain to step on one of those little
•'T^KIi.^
146
VaVE LA FRANCE !
trigger-wires. To collect that soldier's re-
mains it would be necessary to use a pail and
shovel. The Germans are said to dig shallow
pools outside their trenches and cement the
bottoms of those pools and fill them with acid,
whicli is masked by boughs or straw. Any
soldiers who stumbled into those pools of acid
would have their feet burned off. This I
have not seen, but I have been assured that it
is so. Along certain portions of the front the
orthodox barbed-wire entanglements are giving
way to great spirals of heavy telegraph wire.
which, lying loose upon the ground, envelop
and hamper an advancing force like the
tentacles of a giant cuttlefish. This wire comes
in coils about three feet in diameter, but
instead of unwinding it the coils are opened out
into a sort of spiral cage, which can be rolled
over the tops of the trenches without exposing
a man. A bombardment which would wipe
the ordinary barbed-wire entanglement out of
existence, does this new form of obstruction
comparatively little harm, while the wire is so
tough and heavy that the soldiers vidth nippers
who precede a storming-party cannot cut it.
Another novel contrivance is the hinged
1
">7'ff'k1?i6^i
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE ,47
entanglement, a sort of barbed-wire fence which
when not in use, lies flat upon the ground,
where it is but little exposed to shell-fire, but
which, by means of wires running back to the
trenches, can be p^.-d upright in case of an
attack, so that the advancing troops suddenly
find themselves confronted by a formidable
and unexpected barrier. In cases where the
lines are so close togecher that for men to
expose themselves would mean almost certain
death, chevaux-de-frise of steel and wire are
constructed in the shelter of the trenches and
pushed over the parapet with poles. The
French troops now frequently advance to the
assault, carrying huge rolls of thick linoleum,
which is unrolled and thrown across the
entanglements, thus forming a sort of bridge,
by means of which the attacking force is enabled
to cross the river of barbed wire in front of
the German trenches.
It is not safe to assert that anything relating
to this war is untrue merely because it is
incredible. I have with my own eyes seen
things which, had I been told about them before
the war began, I would have set down as the
imaginings of a disordered mind. Some one
•^mFmsiPswmm^
■i i
Ml
148
VIVE LA FRANCE !
asked me if I knew that the scene-painters of
the French theatres had been mobilized and
formed into a battalion for the purpose of
painting scenery to mask gun-positions— and I
laughed at the story. Since then I have seen
gun-positions so hidden. Suppose that it is
found necessary to post a battery in the open,
where no cover is available. In the ordinary
course of events the German airmen would dis-
cover those guns before they had fired a dozen
rounds, and the German batteries would
promptly proceed to put them out of action.
So they erect over them a sort of tent, and the
scene-painters are set to work so to paint that
tent, that from a httle distance, it cannot be
distinguished from the surrounding scenery. If
it is on the Belgian Httoral they will paint it to
look hke a sand-dune. If it is in the wooded
country of Alsace or the Argonne they will so
paint it that, seen from an aeroplane, it will
look hke a clump of trees. I have seen a whole
row of aeroplane hangars, each of them the size
of a church, so cleverly ^ ainted that, from a
thousand feet above, they could not be seen at
all. A road over which there is heavy traffic
lies within both range and sight of the enemy's
THE RFTAKING OF ALSACE
guns.
'49
Anything seen moving along that road
instantly becomes the target for a rain of shells.
So along the side of the road nearest the
enemy is raised a screen of canvas, like those
which surround the side-shovi^s at the circus,
but, instead of being decorated with lurid
representations of the Living Skeleton and the
Uild Man from Borneo and the Fattest
Woman on Earth, and the Siamese Twins, it is
painted to represent a row of trees such as
commonly border French highways. Behind
that canvas screen horse, foot, and guns can
then be moved in safety, though the road must
be kept constantly sprinkled so that the sus-
picions of the German observers shall not be
aroused by a teU-tale cloud of dust. The stalk-
ing-screen is a device used for approaching big
game by sportsmen the world over. Now the
idea has been applied by the French to warfare,
the big game being in this case Germans. The
screens are of steel plates covered with canvas
so painted that it looks like a length of trench,
the deception being heightened by sticking to
the canvas tufts of grass. Thus screened from
the enemy, two or three men may secretly keep
watch at points considerably in advance of the
If;
HI
150
VIVE LA FRANCE
real trenches, creeping forward as opportunity
oflFers, pushing their scenery before them.
Both sides have long been daubing field-guns
and caissons and other bulky equipment with
all the colours of the rainbow, like a futurist
landscape, so that they assume the properties
of a chameleon and become indistinguishable
from the landscape. Now they are painting
the faces of the snipers, and splashing their
uniforms and rifle barrels with many colours and
tying to their heads wisps of grass and foUage.
But the crowning touch was when the French
began systematically to paint their white horses
with permanganate so as to turn them into less
obtrusive browns and sorrels.
Hollowed at frequent intervals from the
earthen back walls of the trenches are niches,
in each of which is kept a bottle of liyposulphate
of soda and a pail of water. When the yellow
cloud which denotes that the Germans have
turned loose their poison-gas comes rolling
dovm upon them, the soldiers hastily empty
the hyposulphate into the water, saturate in
the solution thus formed a pad of gauze which
thry always carry with them, fasten it over
the mouth and nostrils by iMean^ of an elastic,
and, as an additional precaution, draw over the
't^'«irv2«w.*
fp
•• .M'n.,Nc cntanglcmau- arc „„. true tc.i i„ the ,hdtcr of
til... .he men tiu not ha^e t.. exp,.,e them.clve. "
,| !
PI
" \\ lii-n uiL- i'n:-i)ii-i.M- i.iniv> ruiliii^ ilduii upon tiic trctuiic^
ilic MiKiiiT- t.i-tcii i)\cr the iiiiiutli ;iiul iin-triK .i p.iJ ot'^'.ui/c
.ituiitcJ m .1 i!\ p(i-ulpli.uc -oliitliMi '■
I !
THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 151
head a bag of blue linen with a piece of mica
set in the front and a draw-string to pull it tight
about the neck. Thus protected and looking
strangely like the hooded familiars of the
Inquisition, they are able to remain at their
posts without fear of asphyxiation. But no
protection has as yet been devised against the
terrible flame projector which has been intro-
duced on several portions of the western front
by the Germans. It is a living sheet of flame,
caused by a gas believed to be oxyacetylene, and
is probably directed through a powerful air-jet.
The pressure of the air must be enormous, for
the flame, which springs from the ground level
and expands into a roaring wave of fire, chars
and burns everything within thirty yards. The
flame is, indeed, very like that of the common
blowpipe used by plumbers, but instead of
being used upon lead pipe it is used upon
human flesh and bone.
But poison-gas and flame projectors are by
no means the most devilish of the devices
introduced by the Germans. The soldiers of
the Kaiser have now adopted the weapon of the
jealous prostitute and are throwing vitriol.
The acid is contained in fragile globes or phials
which break upon contact, scattering the liquid
'I!
ni
ir
h
152
M\ E LA FRANCE !
fire upon everything in the immediate vicinity.
I might add that I do not make this assertion
except after tlie fullest investigation and con-
firmaiion. I have not only talked with officers
and men who were in the trenches into which
these vitriol bombs were thrrvn, but American
ambulance drivers both in the Vosges and
the Argonne told me that they had carried
to the hospitals French soldier's whose faces
had been burned almost beyond recognition.
"But we captured one of the vitriol-
throwers," said an otT^cer who was telling me
about the helhsh business. " He was pretty
badly burned himself."
" I suppose you shot him then and there,"
said I.
"Oh, no," was the answer, "we sent him
along with the other prisoners."
"You don't mean to say," I exclaimed,
indignation in my voice, " that you captured a
man who had been throwing vitriol at your
soldiers and let him live ? "
" Naturally," said the officer quietly. "There-
was nothing else to do. Vou see, monsieur,
we French are civilized."
:]f i
V. TUK FIGHTING IN CHAM-
pac;nk
W\\E\ the history of this war comes
to be written, the great French
offensive which began on Sep-
tember 25, 1915, midway between Rheims
and Verdun, will doubtless be known as the
Battle of Champagne. Hell holds no horrors
for one who has seen that battlefield. Could
Dante have walked beside me across that
dreadful place, which had been transformed by
human agency from a peaceful countryside
to a garbage heap, a cesspool, and a charnel-
house combined, he would never have written
his " Inferno," because the hell of his imagina-
tion would have seemed colourless and tame.
The difficulty in writing about it is that people
will not believe me. I shall be accused of
imagination and exaggeration, whereas the
truth is that no one could imagine, much less
exaggerate, the horrors that I saw upon those
rolling, chalky plains.
In order that you may get clearly in your
153
,^,j .^:\ ,•
"l!
154
VIVE LA FRANCE !
mind thesetting of this titanic conflict, in which
nearly a milhon and a half Frenchmen and
Germans were engaged and in which Europe
lost more men in killed and wounded than
fought at Gettysburg, get out your atlas, and
on the map of eastern France draw a more or
less irregular line from Rheims to Verdun. This
line roughly corresponds to the battle-front in
Champagne. On the south side of it were the
French, on the north the Germans. About
midway between Rheim.s and Verdun mark off
on that Une ^ sector of some fifteen miles.
If you have a sufficiently large-scale map, the
hamlet of Aubcrive may be taken as one end
of the sector and Massigcs as the other. This,
then, was the spot chosen by the French for
their sledge-hammer blow against the German
wall of steel.
There is scarcely a region in all France where
a bat.le could have been fought with less
injury to property. Imagine, if you please, an
immense undulating plain, its surface broken
by occasional low hills and ridges, none of them
much over six hundred feet in height, and
wandering in and out between those ridges the
narrow stream whicli is the Marne. The
ill
Hrmgin^ in tlu- wounded ....v]u^ tl,,- battle of L'h. -^.pj^ne
' '■"- '■■'"' I I-.ui. :|M- Hi.,,. Ill, ., i,, ;,ii;,,i ,.,,1 „,.,^, .,!,., I ,i^^. f ,. ,, . ^j , ^^ ,,^ , ^^
(Jcrman olticer, ..ipturcd duriiii^ tlic b.utic of Champ.iyiie
|;..f':.t;;;.™:^:;:,.';;/:/:,:.r^;;:,;,:;:;,"v-:;::r;;rr;:;v:":: ;••■
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 155
country hereabouts is very sparsely settled ; the
few villages that dot the plain are wretchedly
poor ; the trees on the slopes of the ridges are
stunted and scraggly ; the soil is of chalky
marl, which you have only to scratch to leave
a staring scar, and the grass which tries to
grow upon it seems to wither and die of a
broken heart. This was the great manoeuvre
ground of Chalons, and it was good for httle
else, yet only a few miles to the westwaid
begin the vineyards which are France's chief
source of wealth, and an hour's journey to the
eastward is the beautiful forest of the Argonne.
Virtually, the entire summer of 19 15 was
spent by the French in making their prepara-
tions for the great offensive. These prepara-
tions wer- assisted by the extension of the
British front as far as the Somme, thus releasing
a large number of French troops for the opera-
tions in Champagne ; by the formation of new
French units ; and by the extraordinary
quantity of ammunition made available by hard
and continuous work in the factories. The
volume of preparatory work was stupendous.
Artillery of every pattern and caHbre, from the
light mountain guns to the monster weapons
i|i
156
VIVE LA FRANCE
?»
which the workers of Lc Creusot and Bourges
and prophetically christened " Les Vainqueurs,
was gradually assembled until nearly three
thousand guns had been concentrated on a front
of only fifteen miles. Had the guns been placed
side by side they would have extended far
beyond the fifteen-mile battle-front. There
were cannon everywhere. Each battery had a
designated spot to fire at and a score of captive
balloons with telephonic connections directed
the fire. One battery was placed just opposite a
German redoubt which, the Germans boasted,
could be held against the whole French array
by two washerwomen with machine guns.
Behind each of the French guns were stacked
two thousand shells. A network of light rail-
ways was built in order to get this enormous
supply of ammunition up to the guns. From
the end of the railway they built a macada-
1 ized highway, forty feet wide and nine miles
long, straight as a ruler across the rolling plain.
Underground shelters for the men were dug
and underground stores for the arms and
ammunition. The field was dotted with
subterranean first-aid stations, their locations
indicated by sign-boards with scarlet arrows
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 157
and by the Red Cross flags flying over them.
That the huge masses o£ infantry to be used in
the attack might reach their stations without
being annihilated by German shell-fire, the
French dug forty miles of reserve and com-
munication trenches, ten miles of which were
wide enough for four men to walk abr ast.
Hospitals all over France were emptied and
put in readiness for the river of wounded which
would soon come flowing in. In addition to all
this, moral preparation was also necessary, for
it was a question whether the preceding months
of trench varfare and the individual character
it gives t J actions had not affected the control
of the officers over their men. Everything was
foreseen and provided for ; nothing was left to
chance. The French had undertaken the
biggest job in the world, and they set about
accomphshing it as systematically, as methodi-
cally as though they had taken a contract to
build a Simplon Tunnel or to dig a Panama
Canal.
The Germans had held the line from
Auberive to the Forest of the Argonne since the
battle of the Marne. For more than a year
they had been constructing fortifications and
i5« VIVE LA FRANCE!
defences of so formidable a nature that it is
scarcely to be wondered at that they con-
sidered their position as being virtually im-
pregnable. Their trenches, which were topped
with sand-bags and in many cases had walls
of concrete, were protected by wire entangle-
ments, some of which were as much as sixty yards
deep. The ground in front of the entangle-
ments was strewn with sharpened stakes and
fA^f^tt.v-^^-/r:>andlandminesandbombs which
exploded upon contact. The men manning
the trenches fought from behind shields of
armour-plate and every fifteen yards was placed
a machine gun. Mounted on the trench
walls were revolving steel turrets, miniature
editions of those on battleships, all save the top
of the turret and the muzzle of the quick-firing
gun within it being embedded in the ground.
The trenches formed a veritable maze, with
traps and Wind passageways and cul-de-sacs
down which attackers would swarm only to be
wiped out by skilfully concealed machine guns.
At some points there were five hnes of trenches,
one behind the other, the ground behind them
being divided into sections and supphed with
an extraordinary number of communication
iit*t^
•^:^-- ^j •"■^, *..
\) —
5:
*it^y^''^'
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 159
trenches, protected by wir:. entanglements on
both sides, so that, in case the first line was
compelled to give way, the assailants would find
themselves confronted by what were to all
intents a series of small forts, heavily armed and
communicating one with the other, thus
enabling the defenders to rally and organize
flank attacks without the slightest delay. This
elaborate system of trenches formed only the
first German line of defence, remember ; be-
hind it there was a second line, the artillery
being stationed betwe'-n the two. There was,
moreover, an elaborate system of light railways
some of which came right up to the front line,
connecting with the line from Challerange to
Bazancourt, that there might be no delay in
getting up ammunition and fresh troops from
the bases in the rear. No wonder that the
Germans regarded their position as an inland
Gibraltar and listened with amused com-
placence to the reports brought in by their
aviators of the great preparations being made
behind the French lines. Not yet had they
heard the roar of France's massed artillery or
seen the heavens open and rain down death.
On the morning of September 22 began
Ili 1
t
i6o VIVE LA FRANCE !
the great bombardmcnt-the greatest that the
world had ever known. On that morning the
French comniander issued his famous general
order : " I want the artillery so to bend the
trench parapets, so to plough up the dug-outs
and subterranean defences of the enemy's line
as to make it almost possible for my men to
march to the assault with their rifles at the
'1-uldcr." It will be seen that the French
artillerymen had their work laid out for them
iiut they went about it knowing exactly what
they were domg. During the long months of
waiting the French airmen had photographed
and mapped every turn and twist in the
enemy s trenches, every entanglement, every
path, every tree, so that when all was in readi-
ness the French were almost as familiar with
the German position as were the Germans
themselves. The first task of the French
gunners was to destroy the wire entanglements,
and when they finished few entanglements
^mained. The next thing was to bury the
Germans in their dug-outs, and so terrific was
the torrent of high explosive that whole com-
pames which had taken refuge in their under-
ground shelters were annihilated. The para
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE i6i
pets and trenches had also to be levelled so that
the infantry could advance, and so thoroughly
was this done that the French cavalry actually
charged over the ground thus cleared. Then,
while the big guns were shelling the German
cantonments, the staff headquarters, and the
railways by which reinforcements might be
brought up, the ficld-batteries turned their
attention to the communication trenches, drop-
ping such a hail of projectiles that all telephone
communication between the first and second
hnes was interrupted, so that the second line
did not know what was happening in the first.
There are no words between the covers of the
dictionary to describe what ic must have been
like within the German Hnes under that rain
of death. The air was crowded vdth the French
shells. No wonder that scores of the German
prisoners were found to be insane. A curtain
of shell-fire made it impossible for food or
water to be brought to the men in the bom-
barded trenches, and made it equally impos-
sible for these men to retreat. Hundreds of
them who had taken refuge in their under-
ground shelters were buried alive when the
explosion of the great French marmius sent the
I62
VIVE LA FRANCE !
earthen waUs crashing in upon them. Whole
forests of trees were mown down by the blast
of sted from the French guns as a harvester
mows down a field of grain. The wire entan-
glements before the German trenches were
swept away as though by the hand of God The
steel chevaux-de-frise and the shields of armour-
plate were riddled like a sheet of paper into
whuh has been emptied a charge of buck-
shot. Irenches which it had taken months of
painstaking toil to build were uiterlydemolished
in an hour. The sand-bags which lined the
parapets were set on fire by the French high
explosive and the soldiers behind them were
suflPocated by the fumes. The bursts of the
big shells were like volcanoes above the German
lines, vomiting skj^vard huge geysers of earth
and smoke which hung for a time against the
horizon and were then gradually dissipated by
the wind. For three days and two nights the
bombardment never ceased or slackened The
French gunners, streaming with sweat and
grimed with powder, worked like the stokers on
a record-breaking liner. The metallic tanp of
the sorxante-quinze " and the deep-mouthed
roar of the 120's. the 155's, and the ^-joh, and
'.'W^i^i^m^mm^mm^^^f^m
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 163
the screech and moan of the sheik passing
overhead combined to form a hurricane of
sound. Conversation was impossible. To
speaic to a man beside him a soldier had to
shout. Though the ears of the men were stuff*':'
with cotton they ached and throbbed to the
unending detonation. An American aviator
who flew over the lines when the bombardment
was at its height told me that the German
trenches could not be seen at all because of
the shells bursting upon them. " The noise,"
he said, " was hkc a machine gun made of
cannon." Imagine, then, what must have been
the terror of the Germans cowering in the
trenches which they had confidently bcUeved
were proof against anything and which they
suddenly found were no protection at all against
that roin of death which seemed to come from
no human agency, but to be hellish in the
frightfulness of its effect. When the bombard-
ment was at its height the shells burst at the
rate of twenty a second, forming one wave of
black smoke, one unbroken line of exploding
shells, as far as the horizon.
Graphic glimpses of what it must have been
like in the German trenches during that three
II
i,l
164
VIVE LA FRANCE !
days' bombardment are given by the letters
and diaries found on the bodies of German
soldiers— written, remember, in the very shadow
of derth, some of them rendered illegible
because spattered with the blood of the men
who wrote them.
"The railway has been shelled so heavily
that all trains are stopped. \\c have been in
the first line for three days, and during that
tine the French have kept up such a fire that
ur trenches cannot be seen at all."
"The artillery are firing almost as fast a?
the infantry. The whole front is covered with
smoke and we can see nothing. Men are
dying like flics."
" A hail of shells is falling upon us. No food
can be brought to us. When v%ill the end
con-;. ? ' Peace ! ' is what every one is saying.
LitLle is left of the trench. It will soon be on
a level with the ground."
" "The noise is awful. It is like a collapse
of the world. Sixty men out of a company
of two hundred and fifty were killed last
night. The force of the French sheUs
is frightful. A dug-out fifteen feet deep,
with seven feet of earth and two layers of
£?:\-^u-'; Vv;.:^:^._-tr%i^iJte^-:r
I
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 165
timber on top, was smashed up like so much
matchwood."
When the reveille rang out along the French
lines at five-thirty on the morning ' f Sep-
tember 25, the whole world see led grty ;
lead-coloured clouds hung low over! ,:au, and a
drizzling r-^in was faUing. But the m^n refused
to be depressed. They drank their morning
coffee and then, the roar of the artillery making
conversation out of the question, they sat down
to smoke and wait. Through the loopholes
they could watch the effect of the fire of the
French batteries, could see the fountains of
earth and smoke thrown up by the bursting
shells, could even see arms and legs flying in
the air. Each man wore between his shoulders,
pinned to his coat, a patch of white calico, in
order to avoid the possibihty of the French
gunners firing into their own men. Several
men in each company carried small, coloured
signal-flags for the same purpose. The watches
of the officers had been carefully synchronized,
and at nine o'clock the order to fall in was given,
and there formed up in the advance trenches
long rows of strange fighting figures in their
'" invisible " pale-blue uniforms, their grim, set
i
m
i66 VIVE LA FRANCE !
faces peering from beneath steel helmets
plastered with chalk and mud. The company
rolls were called. The drummers and buglers
took up their positions, for orders had been
issued that the troops were to be played into
action. Nine-Jive/ The regimental battle-
flags were brought from the dug-outs, the
water-proof covers were shppcd off, and the
sacred colours, on whose faded silk were
embroidered " Lcs Pyramides," " \\ agram,"
" Jena," " Austerlitz," " Marengo, "were rever-
ently unrolled. For the first time in this war
French troops were to go into action with their
colours flying. Nine-ten! The officers, en-
deavouring to make their voices heard above the
din of cannon, told the men in a few shouted
sentences what France and the regi'nent ex-
pected of them. Nine-jour teen! The officers,
having jerked loose their automatics, stood with
their watches in their hands, l^he men were
like sprinters on their marks, waiting with tense
nerves and muscles for the starter's pinol.
Nine-ffteen ! Above the roar of the artillery
the whistles of the officers shrilled loud and
clear. I'he bugles pealed the charge. " En
avant, me.' enjants ! '' screamed the officers.
'%F^Mi-
!h:h
m
'•■.a
i!
f^aSs3i^'l,'-'^<Lt
■■r..i..'\i-; ■ ■;'. ,„-;-,--. 'i -".ilk- >.v.Sy. •■
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 167
avant ! Vaincre ou mourir / '' and over
tJ tops of the trenches, with a roar like an
angry sea breaking on a rock-bound coast, surged
a iifteen-mile-loni,' human wave tipped with
ghstening steel. As the blue billows of men
burst into the open, hoarsely cheering, the
PVench batteries which had been shelling the
German first-line trenches ceased firing with an
abruptness that was starthng. In the compara-
tive quiet thus suddenly created could be plainly
heard the orders of the officers and the cheering
of the men, some of whom shouted " Five la
France / " while others sang snatches of the
Marsullaisc and the Carmagiok. Though
every foot of ground over which they were ad-
vancing had for three days been systematically
flooded with shell, though the German trenches
had been pounded until they were Httle more
than heaps of dirt and debris, the German ar-
tillery was still on the job, and the ranks of the
advancing French were swept by a hurricane of
fire. General Marchand, the hero of the famous
incident at Fashoda, who was in command of
the Colonials, led his men to the assault, but fell
wounded at the very beginning of the engage-
ment, as surrounded by his staff, he stood on the
i i
!
hi!
1 68
VIVE LA FRANCE !
crest of a trench, cane in hand, smoking his pipe
and encouraging the succeeding waves of men
racing forward into battle. Mis two brigade-
commanders fell close beside him. Three
minutes after the first of the Colonials had
scrambled over the top of their trenches they
had reached the German first line. After them
came the First and Second Regiments of the
Foreign Legion and the Moroccan division. As
they ran they broke out from columns of two
(advancing in t vos with fifty paces between each
pair) -nto columns of squad (each man alone,
twenty-five paces from his neighbour)as prettily
and perfectly as though on a parade-ground.
Great as was the destruction wrought bv
the bombardment, the French infantry had
no easy task before them, for stretches of wire
entanglements still remained in front of por-
tions of the German trenches, while at fre-
quent intervals the Germans had left behind
them machine-gun sections, who from their
sunken positions poured in a deadly fire, until
the oncoming wave overwhelmed and blotted
them out. It was these death-traps that
brought out in the French soldier those same
heroic quahties which had enabled him, under
FIGHTING IX CHAMPAGNE 169
the leadership of Napoleon, to enter as a con-
queror every capital in Europe. A man who
was shot while cutting a way for his company
through the wire entanglements, turned and
gave the cutters to a comrade before he fell.
A wounded soldier lying on the ground called
out to an officer who was stepping aside to
avoid him : " Go on. Don't mind stepping
on me. I'm wounded. It's only you who
are whole who matter now." A man with
his abodmen ripped open by a shell appealed
to an officer to be moved to a dressing-station.
" The first thing to move are the guns to
advanced positions, my friend," was the
answer. " That's right," said the man ; " I
can wait." Said a wounded soldier afterward
in describing the onslaught : *' When the
bugle sounded the charge and the trumpets
played the Marseillaise, we were no longer
mere men marching to the assault. We were
a living torrent which drives all before it. The
colours were flying at our side. It was splendid.
Ay. my friend, when one has seen that one is
proud to be alive."
In many places the attacking columns found
themselves abruptly halted by steel chevaux-
Mf'
•J'
-4
1
'II
170
VIVE LA FRANCE !
de-Jrise, with German machine guns spitting
death from behind them. The men would
pelt them with hand-grenades until the sappers
came up and blew the obstructions away.
Then they would sweep forward again with the
bayonet, yelling madly. The great craters
caused by the explosion of the French land
mines nrre occupied as soon as possible and
immediately turned into defensible positions,
thus affording advanced footholds within the
enemy's line of trenches. At a few points in
the first line the Germans held out, but at
others they surrendered in large numbers,
while many were shot dr)\vn as they were run-
ning back to the second line. As a matter of
fact, the Germans had no conception of what
the French had in store for them, and it was
not until their trenches began to give way
under the terrible hammering of the French
artillery that they realized how desperate was
their situation. It was then too late to
strengthen their front, however, as it would
have been almost certain death to send men for-
ward through the curtain of shcll-fire which the
French batteries were dropping between the
first and second lines. Nor were the Germans
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 171
prepared when the infantry attack began, as
was shown by the fact that «» number of officers
were captured in their beds. The number of
prisoners taj:en — twenty-one thousand was the
figure announced by the French General Staff
— showed clearly that they had had enough of
it. They surrendered by sections and by com-
panies, hundreds at a time. Most of them
had had no food for several days, and were
suffering acutely from thirst, and all of them
seemed completely unstrung and depressed by
the terrible nature of the French bombardment.
Choosing the psychological moment when,
the retirement of the Germans showed signs of
turning into panic, the African troops were
ordered to go in and finish up the business with
cold steel. Before these dark-skinned, fierce-
faced men from the desert, who came on
brandishing their weapons and shouting " Allah
Allah ! Allah ! " the Germans, already de-
morahzed, incontinently broke and m. Hard
on the heels of the Africans trotted the
dragoons and the chasseurs a cheval — the first
time since the trench warfare began that
cavalry have had a chance to fight from the
saddle — sabring the fleeing Germans or driving
'7-
VIVE LA FRANCE
them out of their dug-outs with their long
lances. But in the vast maze of communica-
tion trenches and in the underground shelters
Germans still swarmed thickly, <o the " trench
cleaners," as the Algerian and Senegalese
tirailleurs are called, were ordered to clear
them out, a task which they performed with
neatness and despatch, revolver in one hand
and cutlass in the other. Even five days after
the trenches were taken occasional Germans
were found in hiding in the labyrinth of under-
ground shelters.
The thing of which the Champagne battle-
field most reminded me was a garbage-heap.
It looked and smelled as though all the garbage
cans in Europe and America had been emptied
upon it. Ti'is region, as I have remarked
before, is of '4 chalk formation, and wherever
a trench hr.d been dug, or a shell had burst,
or a mino had been exploded, it left on the
face of the earth a livid scar. The destruction
wrought by the French artillery fire is almost
beyond imagining. Over an area as long as from
Cliaring Cr()<^ to Hanipstead Heatli and as wide
as from the Bank to the Marble Arch the earth
is pitted with the craters caused by bursting
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 173
shells as is pitted the face of a man who has
had the small-pox. Any of these shell-holes
was large enough to hold a barrel ; many of
them would have held a horse ; I saw one,
caused by the explosion of a mine, which we
estimated to be seventy feet deep and twice
that in diameter. In the terrific blast that
caused it five hundred German soldiers
perished. At another point on what had been
the German first line I saw a yawning hole as
large as the cellar of a good-sized apartment
house. It marked the site of a German block-
house, but the blockhouse and the men who
composed its garrison had been blown out of
existence by a torrent of 370-milUmetre high-
explosive shells.
The captured German trenches presented
the most horrible sight that I have ever seen or
ever expect to see. This is not rhetoric ; this is
fact. Along the whole front of fifteen miles
the earth was littered with torn steel shields
and tA-isted wire, with broken waggons, bits
of harness, cartridge-pouches, dented helmets,
belts, bayonets — some of them bent double —
broken rifles, field-gun shells and rifle cart-
ridges, hand-grenades, aerial torpedoes, knap-
»74
VI\E LA FRANCE!
sacks, bottles, splintered planks, sheets of cor-
rugated iron which had been turned into sieves
by bursting shrapnel, trench mortars, blood-
soaked bandages, fatigue-caps, entrenching
tools, stoves, iron rails, furniture, pots of jam
and marmalade, note-books, water-bottles
mattresses, blankets, shreds of clothing, and,
most horrible of all, portions of what had once
been human bodies. Passing through an
abandoned German trench, I stumbled over a
mass of grty rags, and they dropped apart to
disclose a headless, armless, legless torso already
partially devoured by insects. I kicked a hob-
nailed German boot out of my path and from it
fell a rotting foot. A hand with awful, out-
spread lingers thrust itself from the earth as
thou^'h appealing to the passer-by to give decent
burial to its dead owner. I peered inquisitively
into a dug-out only to be driven back by an
overpowering stench. A French soldier, more
hardened to the business than I, went in with a
candle, and found the shell-blackened bodies of
three Germans. Clasped in the dead fingers of
one of them was a postcard dated from a little
town in Bavaria. It began : " My dearest
Heinrich : You went away from us just a year
^>.^#«5l5ii",v-.\£i^5
! ':'
Tfli J^cll-i i.j'i.- I Ilk III II
K UcncliL-
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 175
ago to-day. I miss you terribly, as do the
children, and we all pray hourly for your safe
return — " The rest we could not decipher ;
it had been blotted out by a horrid crimson
stain. Without the war that man might have
been returning, after a day's work in field or
factory, to a neat Bavarian cottage, with
geraniums growing in the garden, and a wife
and children waiting for him at the gate.
Though when I visited the battlefield of
Champagne the guns were still roaring — for the
Germans were attempting to retake their lost
trenches in a desperate series of counter-attacks
— the field was already dotted with thousands
upon thousands of little wooden crosses planted
upon new-made mounds. Above many of the
jrraves there had been no time to erect crosses or
headboards, so into the soft soil was thrust, neck
downward, a bottle, and in the bottle was a
sHp of paper giving the name and the regiment
of the soldier who lay beneath. In one place
the graves had been dug so as to form a vast
rectangle, and a priest, his cossack tucked up so
that it showed his military boots and trousers,
was at work with saw and hammer building in
the centre of that field of graves a little shrine.
N^
^1^ VIVE LA FRANCE !
Scrawled in pencil on one of the pitiful little
crosses I read- "TTr, u t^ ., "^ """
1 rcaa . un brave—Em le Petir—
Men au. Champ d'Honncur-Priez pou.ll.^
bu feet away was another cross which mark
the W urtcmberg Pioneers, and underneath in
«!,s «-n ?**" '•"= ^°°^ "^g*"-" Close by
«a st.Il another little mound under which
rested so the headboard told me, Mohammed
ben Hassen Bazazou of the Fourth Algerian
Ttrameurs. In life those men had never o
much as heard of one another. Doubtless they
must often have wondered why they were
fightmg and what the war was all about. Now
ma'n aTd r '" ^""'^ ''^' ""^ ''^'' french-
man and German and African, under the soil
of Charnpagne, while somewhere in France
and m U iirtemberg and in Algeria women are
praymg for the safety of Emile and of Gott-
heb and of Mohammed.
h !?,"f ,V^' ''^'"^ ''"J'^ "■" I ^P'^nt upon the
battlefield of Champagne the roar of the gun!
never ceased and rarely slackened, yet not a
sign of any human being could I see as I gazed
out over that desolate plain on which was being
■'I
An ironciad French turret
i'
FIGHTING LN CHAMPAGNE 177
fought one of the greatest battles of all time.
There were no moving troops, no belching bat-
teries, no flaunting colours — only a vast slag-
heap on which moved no living thing. Yet I
knew that hidden beneath the ground all
around me, as well as over there where the
German trenches ran, men were waiting to kill
or to be killed, and that behind the trench-
scarred ridges at my back, and behind the low-
lying crests in front of me, sweating men were
at work loading and firing the great guns whose
screaming missiles criss< rossed like invisible
express trains overhead to biurst miles away,
perhaps, with the crash which scatters death.
The French guns seemed to be literally every-
where. One could not walk a hundred yards
without stumbling on a skilfully concealed
battery. In the shelter of a ridge was posted
a battery of 155-milimetre monsters painted
with the markings of a giraffe in order to
escape the searching eyes of the German
aviators and named respectively Alice, Fer-
nande, Charlotte, and Maria. From a square
opening, which yawned Hke a cellar window
in the earth, there protruded the long, lean
muzzle of an eight-inch naval gun, the breech
178
VIVE LA FRANCE !
of which was twenty feet below the lercl of
the ground in a gun-pit which was capable of
resisting any high explosive that might chance
to fall upon it. This marine monster was in
charge of a crew of sailors who boasted that
their pet could drop two hundred pounds of
melinite on any given object thirteen miles
away. But the guns to which the French owe
their success in Champagne, the guns which
may well prove the deciding factor in this war,
are not the cumbersome sie>e pieces f)r the
mammoth naval cannon, bui the mobile,
quick-firing, never - tiring, hard-hitting,
" seventy-fives," whose fire, the Germans
resentfully exclaim, is not deadly but
murderous.
The battlefield was almost as thickly strewn
with unexploded shells, hand-grenades, bombs,
and aerial torpedoes as the ground under a
pine-tree is with cones. One was, in fact, com-
pelled to walk with the utmost care in order
to avoid stepping upon these tubes filled with
sudden death and being blown to kingdom
come. I had picked up and was casually
examining what looked Hke a piece of broom-
handle with a tin tomato-can on the end, when
^Ph
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 179
the intelligence officer who was accompanying
me noticed what I was doing. " Don't drop
that ! " he exclaimed, " put it down gently.
It's a German hand-grenade that has failed to
explode and the least jar may set it off. They're
as dangerous to tamper with as nitroglycerine."
I put it down as carefully as though it were a
sleeping baby that I did not wish to waken.
As the French Government has no desire to
lose any of its soldiers unnecessarily, men had
been set to work building around the unexploded
shells and torpedoes little fences of barbed wire,
just as a gardener fences in a particularly
rare shrub or tree. Other men were at work
carefully rolling up the barbed wire in the
captured German entanglements, in collect-
ing and sorting out the arms and equipment
with which the field was strewn, in stacking
up the thousands upon thousands of empty
brass shell-cases to be shipped back to the
factories for reloading, and even in emptying
the bags filled with sand which had lined the
German parapets and tying them in bundles
ready to be used over again. They are a thrifty
people, are the French. There was enough
spoil of one sort and another scattered over the
ft
II
i8o
VIVE LA FRANCE !
battlefield to have stocked all the curio-shops
in Europe and America for years to come, but
as everything on a field of battle is claimed by
the (jovernment nothing can be carried away.
This explains why the brass shells that are
smuggled back to Paris readily sell for ten
dollars apiece, while for German helmets the
curio dealers can get almost any price that
they care to ask. As a maf r of fact, it is
against the law to offer any war trophies for
sale or, indeed, to have any in one's possession.
What the French intend to do with the vast
quantity of spoil which they have taken from
the battlefields, heaven only knows. It is
said that they have great storehouses filled
with German helmets and similar trophies
which they are going to sell after the war to
souvenir collectors, thus adding to the national
revenues. If this is so there will certainly be
a glut in the curio market and it will be a poor
household indeed that will not have on the
sitting-room mantelshelf a German pickelhaube.
After the war is over hordes of tourists will
no doubt make excursions to these battle-
fields, just as they used to make excursions to
Waterloo and Gettysburg, and the farmers
who own the fields will make their fortune
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE i8i
showing the visitors thro veil the trenches and
dug-outs at five francs a head.
The French officers who accompanied me
over the battlefield particularly called my
attention to a steel turret, 3ome six feet high
and eight or nine feet in diameter, which had
been mounted on one of the German trench
walls. The turret, which had a revolving
top, contained a 5G-millimetre gun served by
three men. The French troops who stormed
the German position found that the small steel
door giving access to the interior of the turret
was fastened on the outside by a chain and
padlock. When they broke it open they found,
so they told me, the bedies of three Germans
who had apparently been locked in by their
officers, and left there to fight and die with no
chance of escape. I have no reason in the
/orld to doubt the good faith of the officers
who showed me the turret^ and told me the
story, and yet — ^well, it is one of those things
which seems too improbable to be true. As
I have already mentioned (p. 135) when I was
in Alsace the French officers told me that
they found in certain of the captured posi-
tions German soldiers chained to their machine
guns. There again the inherent improbability
r If ii^i ««*■'■ *» • -'^-'s-v -
,jpi«ir«rtl<[
i^L,^
iS:
VIVF. LA FRANCE !
of the incident leads one to question its truth.
From what 1 have seen of the German soldier,
I should say that he was the last man in the
world who had to be chained to his gun in order
to make him fight. Yet in this war so many
wildly improbable, wholly incredible things
have actually occurred that one is not justified
in denying the truth of an assertion merely
because it sounds unlikely.
One of the things that particularly impressed
me during my visit to Champagne was the
feverish activity that prevailed behind the firing-
line. It was the busiest place that I have ever
seen ; busier than Wall Street at the noon-hour ;
busier than the Panama Canal Zone at the rush
period of the Canal's construction. The roads
behind the front for twenty miles were filled
with moving troops and transport-trains ; long
columns of sturdy infantrymen in mud-stained
coats of faded blue and wearing steel casques
which gave them a starthng resemblance to
their ancestors, the men-at-arms of the Middle
Ages ; brown-skinned men from North Africa
in snowy turbans and voluminous burnouses,
and black-skinned men from West Africa, whose
khaki uniforms were brightened by broad red
1 1!
IiiMU II t.u t\l iiKn trom North Africa in turl<.in-
;iiui Iniriiou-e^ "
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 183
sashes and rakish red tarbooshes ; sun-tanned
Colonial soldiery from Annam and Tonquin,
from Somaliland and Madagascar, wearing on
their tunics the ribbons of wars fought in lands
of which most people have never so much a3
heard ; Spahis from Morocco and the Sahara,
mounted on horses as wiry and hardv as them-
selves ; Zouaves in jaunty fezes and braided
jackets and enormous trousers ; sailors from
the fleet, brought to handle the big naval guns,
swaggering along vdth the roll of the sea in
their gait ; cuirassiers, their steel breastplates
and horse-tailed helmets making them look
astonishingly like Roman horsemen ; dragoons
so picturesque that they seemed be posing
for a Detaille or a Meissonier ; field-batteries,
pale blue hke everything else in the French
army, rocking and swaying over the stones ;
cyclists with their rifles slung across their
backs hunter-fashion ; leather-jacketed des-
patch riders on panting motor-cycles ; post-
offices on wheels ; telegraph offices on wheels ;
butchers' shops on wheels ; bakers' shops on
wheels ; garages on wheels ; motor-buses, their
tops covered with wire-netting and filled with
carrier-pigeons ; giant searchlights ; water-
E3SE!!
184
VIVE LA FRANCE !
carts drawn by patient Moorish donkeys whose
turbaned drivers cursed them in hrill, harsh
Arabic ; troop transport cars hke miniature
railway-coaches, each carrying fifty men ; field-
kitchens with the smoke pouring from their
stovepipes and steam rising from the soup
cauldrons ; longHnes of drinking-water waggons,
the gift of the Touring Club de France ; great
herds of cattle and woolly waves of sheep, soon
to be converted into beef and mutton, for the
fighting man needs meat, and plenty of it ;
pontoon-trains ; balloon outfits ; machine
guns ; pack-trains ; mountain batteries ; ambu-
lances ; worid without end, amen. Though
the roads were jammed from ditch to ditch,
there was no confusion, no congesrion. Every-
thing was as well regulated as the traflSc is in
the busiest London streets. If the roads were
crowded, so were the fields. Here a battalion
of Zouaves at bayonet practice was being in-
structed in the " haymaker's hft," that terrible
upward thrust in which a soldier trained in the
use of the bayonet can, in a single stroke, rip his
adversary open from waist to neck, and toss him
over his shoulder as he would a forkful of hay.
Over there a brigade of chasseurs d'Afrique was
Motor hut> with vvirc-ni.ttip.g top- H!IcJ with rarrier pigeon^
(ii.riii.iii piiinii- iMiiic In . i.irr\ iiig "ii thcT -IhuiUi-T-
-:rc;i-licr on wniih l.n the stitl, -taik r<:rin- ot'dcul iiv n
Mm Win- at work rolling up tin- ImiIhiI wire in tlu
» .ipuiiivi liirni.iu (.•lit.iii^IciiK-iitb •'
FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 185
encamped, the long lines of horses, the hooded
waggons, and the fires with the cooking-pots
steaming over them, suggesting a mammoth
encampment of gypsies. In the next field a
regiment of Moroccan tirailleurs had halted for
the night, and t' men, knechng on their
blankets, were praying with their faces turned
toward Mecca. Down by the horse-hncs a
Moorish barber was at work shaving the heads
of the soldiers, but taking care always to leave
the little top-knot by means of which the faith-
ful when they die, may be jerked to Paradise.
A little farther on the hugf^ yellow bulk of an
observation balloon—" Us saucisses,*' the French
call them — ^was slowly filling preparatory to
taking its place aloft with its fellows, which, at
intervals of half a mile, hung above the French
lines, straining at their tethers hke horses that
were frightened and wished to break away.
In whichever direction I looked, men were
driUing or marching. Where all these hordes
of men had come from, where they were bound,
what they were going to do, no one seemed
to know or, indeed, particularly to care. They
were merely pawns which were being moved
here and there upon a mighty chessboard by a
1 86
\ IV K LA FRANCE !
stout old man in a general's uniform, sitting
at a map-covered tabic in a farmhouse many
miles away.
As we made our way slowly and laboriously
toward the front across a region so littered
with scraps of metal and broken iron and
twisted wire that it looked Hke the ruins of
a burned hardware store, we began to meet
the caravans of wounded. Lying with white,
drawn faces on the dripping stretchers were
men whose bodies had been ripped open like
the carcasses that hang in front of butchers'
shops ; men who had been blinded and will
spend the rest of their days groping in dark-
ness ; men smashed out of all resemblance to
anything human, yet still alive ; and other men
who, with no wound upon them, raved and
laughed and cackled in insane mirth at the
frightful humour of the things that they had
seen. Every house and farmyard for miles
around was filled with wounded, and still they
came streaming in, some hobbling, some on
stretchers, some assisted by comrades, some
bareheaded, with the dried blood clotted on
their heads and faces, other with their gas-
masks and their mud-plastered helmets still on.
Two soldiers came by pushing wheeled
I-IGFITING IN CHAMPAGNE 187
stretchers, on which lay the stiff, stark forms of
dead men. The soldiers were whistling and
singing, like men returning from a day's work
well done, and occasionally one of them in sheer
exuberance of spirits would send his helmet
spinning into the air. Coming to a little de-
cHvity, they raced down it with their grisly
burdens, like delivery boys racing with their
carts. The light vehicles bumped and jounced
over the uneven ground until one of the corpses
threatened to fall off, whereupon the soldiers
stopped and, still laughing, tied the dead thing
on again. Such is the callousness begot by war.
Their offensive in Champagne cost the
French, I have every reason to beHeve, very
close to 110,000 men. The German casualties,
so the French General Staff asserts, were
about 140,000, of whom 21,000 were prisoners.
In addition the Germans lost 121 guns. Des-
pite this appalling cost in human lives, the
distance gained by the French was so small
that it cannot be seen on the ordinary map.
Yet to measure the effect of the French effort
by the ground gained would be a serious mis-
take. Just as by the Marne victory the French
stopped the invasion and ruined the original
German plan, which was first to shatter France
1 88
VIVE LA FRANCE !
and then turn against Russia ; and just as by
the victory of the Yser they effectively pre-
vented the enemy from reaching the Channel
ports or getting a foothold in the Pas-dc
Calais, so the offensive in Champagne, costly as
it was in human lives, fulfilled its double
mission of holding large German forces on the
western front and of demorahzing and wearing
down the German army. It proved, moreover,
that the AUies can pierce the Germans provided
they are willing to pay the cost.
Darkness was falling rapidly when I turned
my back on the great battlefield, and the guns
were roaring with redoubled fury in what is
known on the British front as " the Evening
Hate " and on the French hnes as " the
Evening Prayer." As I emerged from the com-
munication trench into the high road where my
car was waiting I met a long column of infantry,
ghostly figures in the twilight, with huge packs
on their backs and rifles slanting on their
shoulders, marching briskly in the direction
of the thundering guns. It was the niglit-shift
going on duty at the mills— the mills where
they turn human beings into carrion.
VI. THK CONFLICT IN THE
CLOUDS
DAWN was breaking over the Lorraine
hills when the French aircraft were
wheeled from their canvas hangars
and ranged in squadrilla formation upon the level
surface of the plain. In the dim hght of early-
morning the machines, with their silver bodies
and ^no\^y wings, bore an amazing resemblance
to a flock of great white birds which, having
settled for the night, were about to resume
their flight. All through the night the
mechanicians had been busy about them, testing
the motors, tightening the guy-vnrcs, and
adjusting the planes, while the pilots had
directed the loading of the explosives, for a
whisper had passed along the line of sheds that a
gigantic air-raid, on a scale not yet attempted,
was to be made on some German town. At a
signal from the officer in command of the
aviation field the pilots and observers, unre-
cognizable in their goggles and leather helmets
and muffled to the ears in leather and fur,
l8y
190
VIVE LA FRANCE !
climbed into their seats. In the clips beneath
each aeroplane reposed three long, lean mes-
sengers of death, he torpedoes of the sky, ready
to be sent hurtling downward by the pulling
of a lever, while smaller projectiles, to be
dropped by hand, filled every square inch in the
bodies of the aeroplanes. From somewhere
out on the aviation field a smoke rocket shot
suddenly into the air. It was the signal for
departure. With a deafening roar from their
propellers the great biplanes, in rapid succession,
left the ground and, like a flock of wild fowl,
winged their way straight into the rising sun.
As they crossed the German lines at a height of
twelve thousand feet the French observers
could see, far below, the decoy aeroplanes which
had preceded them rocking slowly from side to
side above the German anti-aircraft guns in
such a manner as to divert their attention from
the raiders.
On an occasion like this each man is per-
mitted the widest latitude of action. He is
given an itinerary to which he is expected to
adhere as closely as circumstances will permit,
and he is given a set point at which to aim his
bombs, but in all other respects he may use his
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 191
own discretion. The raider* flew at Hrff
almost straight toward the rising sun, and it
was not until they were well within the
enemy's lines that they altered their course,
turning southward only when they were op-
posite the town which was their objective. So
rapid was the pace at which th« y were travelling
that it was not yet six o'clock when the com-
mander of the squadron, peering through his
glasses, saw, far below him, the ytl^nvf grid-
iron which he knew to be the streets, the
splotches of green which he knew to be the
parks, and the squares of red and grey which
he knew to be the buildings of Karlsruhe.
The first warning that the townspeople had
was when a dynamite shell came plunging out
of nowhere and exploded with a crash that
rocked the city to its foundations. The people
of Karlsruhe were being given a dose of the
same medicine which the Zeppelins had given
to Antwerp, to Paris, and to London. As the
French airmen reached the town they swooped
down in swift succession out of the grty morn-
ing sky until they were close enough to the
ground to distinguish clearly through the fleecy
mist the various objectives which had been
ij&
192
VIVE LA FRANCE !
given them. For weeks they had studied map
and bird's-eye photographs of Karlsruhe unt
they knew the place as well as though they ha
lived in it all their lives. One took the ol
grey castle on the hill, another took the Mai
grave's palace in the valley, others headed fr
the railway station, the arms factory, and th
barracks. Then hell broke loose in K^rlsruh.
For nearly an hour it rained bombs. Not ir
ccndiary bombs or shrapnel, but huge 4-inc
and 6-inch shells filled with high explosi\
which annihilated everything they hit. Hoi
as large as cellars suddenly appeared in th
stone-paved streets and squares ; buildings <
brick and stone and concrete crashed to t\
ground as though flattened by the hand (
God ; fires broke out in various quarters of t\
city and raged unchecked ; the terrified ii
habitants cowered in their cellars or ran i
blind panic for the open country ; the noi
was terrific, for bombs were falling at the ra
of a dozen to the minute ; beneath that rain (
death Karlsruhe rocked and reeled. Tl
artillery was called out but it was useless ; r
guns could hit the great white birds whic
twisted and turned and swooped and climbed
KiL'htmt; in a i)uarrcl that i- not hi- (nvn
A t' ■ i ■ r Ir n. I i,, . \hi- .r. )i
'II .illl\ Ml ltl« II* H- tl'>
iH
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 193
mile or more overhead. Each roplane, as
soon as it had exhausted its cargc explosives,
frned its nose toward the Frend lines and
went skimming homeward as fast as its pro-
pellers could take it there, but to the inhabi-
tants of the quivering, shell-torn town it must
have seemed as though the procession of air-
craft would never cease. The return to the
French lines was not as free from danger as
the outward trip had been, for the news of
the raid had been flashed over the country by
wire and wireless and anti-aircraft guns were on
the look out for the raiders everywhere. The
guarding aeroplanes were on the alert, however,
and themselves attracted the fire of the German
batteries or engaged the German T.iubcs while
the returning raiders sped by high overhead.
Of the four squadrillas of aeroplanes which set
out for Karlsruhe only two machines failed to
return. Th sc lost their bearings and were
surprised by the sudden rising of hawk-hke
A\ at lis which cut them of! from home and,
after fierce struggles in the air, forced them to
descend into the German lines. But it was not
a heavy price to pay for the destruction that
had been wrought and the moral effect that
194
VIVE LA FRANCE !
had been produced, for all that day the roads
leading out of Karlsruhe were choked with
frantic fugitives and the stories which they
told spread over all southern Germany a
cloud of despondency and gloom. Since then
the news of the Zeppehn raids on London has
brought a thrill of fear to the people of Karls-
ruhe. They have learned what it means to
have death drop out of the sky.
More progress has been made in the French
air service, which has been placed under the
direction of the recently created Subministry
of Aviation, than in any other branch of the
Republic's fighting machine. Though definite
information regarding the French air service is
extremely difficult to obtain, there is no doubt
that on December i, 1915, France had more
than three thousand aeroplanes in commission,
and this number is being steadily increased.
The French machines, though of many makes
and types, are divided into three classes, ac-
cording to whether they are to be used for
reconnaissance, for fire control, or for bombard-
ment. The machines generally used for recon-
naissance work are the Moranes, the Maurice
Farmans, and a new type of small machine
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 195
known as the " Baby " Nieuport, The last-
named, which are but twenty-five feet wide
and can be built in eight days at a cost of only
six thousand francs, might well be termed the
Fords of the air. They have an eighty horse-
power motor, carry only the pilot, who operates
the machine gun mounted over his head,
2nd can attain the amazing speed of one
hundred and twenty miles an hour. These tiny
machines can ascend at a sharper angle than
any other aeroplane made, it being claimed
for them, and with truth, that they can do
things which a large bird, such as an eagle or
a hawk, could not do. The machines generally
used for directing artillery fire are either
V^oisins or Caudron biplanes. The Voisin,
which carries an observer as well as a pilot, is
armed with a Hotchkiss quick-firer throwing
three-pound shells, being the only machine of
its size having sufficient stability to stand the
recoil from so heavy a gun. The Caudron,
which likewise has a crew of two men, has two
motors, each acting independently '-f the other.
I was shown one of these machines which,
during an observation flight over the German
lines, was struck by a shell which killed the
196
VIVE LA FRANCE !
observer and demolished one of the motors ;
the other motor was not damaged, however,
and with it the pilot was able to bring the
machine and his dead companion back to the
French lines. For making raids and bombard-
ments the Voisin and Breguct machines have
generally been used, but they are now being
replaced by the giant triplanc which has
fittingly been called " the Dreadnought of the
skies." This aerial monster, the last word in
aircraft construction, has a sixty-three foot
spread of wing ; its four motors generate eight
hundred horse-power ; its armament consists
of two Hotchkiss quick-firing cannon and four
macliinc guns ; it can carry twelve men —
though on a raid the cnw consists of four —
and twelve hundred pounds f)f explosive ; its
cost is six hundred tliousand francs.
As a result of this extraordinary advance in
aviation, France has to-day a veritable aerial
navy, formed in squadrons and divisions, with
battleplanes, cruisers, scouts, and destrovers, all
heavily armoured and carrying both machine
guns and cannon firing tliree-inch shells. Each
squadron, a? at present formed, consists of one
battleplane, two battle-cruisers, and six scout-
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 197
planes, with a complement of upward of fifty
officers and men. which includes not only
the pilots and observers but the mechanics
and the drivers of the lorries and trailers
which form part of each (^tfit. These raiding
squadrons are constantly operating over the
cnenn's lines, bombarding his bases, railway
lines, and cantonments, hindering the trans-
portation of trijops and ammunition, and
creating general demoraUzation behind the
tiring-line. On such forays it is the mission of
the smaller and swifter machines, such as the
Nieuports, to convoy and protect the larger
and slower craft exactly as destroyers convoy
and protect a battleship.
'i'wo types of projectiles are carried on raid-
ing aeroplanes ; aerial torpedoes, two, three, or
our in number, fitted with fins, like the
feaiiiers on an arrow, in order to guide their
course, which are held by clips under the body
of the machine and can be released when over
the point to be bombarded by merely pulhng a
lever ; and large quantities of smaller bombs,
filled with high explosive and fitted with per-
cussion fuses, which are dropped by hand. It
is extremely difficult to attain any degree of
'm
198
VIVE LA FRANCE !
accuracy in dropping bombs from moving air-
craft, for it must be borne in mind that the
projectiles, on being released, do not at once
fall in a perfectly straight line to the earth,
like a brick dropped from the top of a sky-
scraper. When an aeroplane is travelling
forward at a speed of, let us say, sixty miles
an hour, the bombs carried on the machine
are also moving through space at the same rate.
Owing to this forward movement combining
with the downward gravitational drop, the path
of the bomb is really a curve, and for this curve
the aviator must learn to make allowance.
Should the aircraft hover over one spot, how-
ever, the downward flight of the bonih is, of
course, comparatively vertical.
The most exciting, a? well as thf most
dangerous, work allotted to the aviators is that
of flying over the enemy's lines and, by means
of huge cameras fitted with telephoto lens and
fastened beneath the bodies of the machines
taking photographs of the German positions.
As soon as the required exposures have been
inade, the machine speeds back to the French
lines, usually amid a storm of bursting slirapnel,
and the plat.^ are quickly developed in the
I
CONFLICT IN THE CLOl'DS 199
dark room, which is a part of every aerodrome.
From the picture thus obtained an enlargement
is made, and within two or three hours at the
most the staff knows every detail of the German
position, even to the depth of the wire entangle-
ments and the number and location of the
machine guns. Should weather conditions or
the activity of the enemy's anti-aircraft bat-
teries make it inadvisable to send a machine on
one of these photographic excursions, the
camera is attached to a cerf volant, or war-kite.
The entire equipment is carried on three motor-
cars built for the purpose, one carrying the dis-
mounted kite, the second the cameras and
crew, while the third car is a dark room on
wheels. I can recall few more interesting sights
along the battle-front than that of one of these
war-kites in operation. Taking shelter behind
a farmhouse or haystack, the staff, in scarcely
more time than it takes to tell about it, have
jointed together the bamboo rods which form
the framework of the kite, the linen which
forms the planes is stretched into place, a
camera with its shutter controlled by an
electric wire is slung underneath, and the great
kite is sent into the air. \\ hen it is over that
200
VIVr: LA FRANCE !
section of tlic enemy's trenches of which a
photograph is wanted, the officer at the end
of the wire presses a button, the shutter of the
camera swinging a thousand feet above flashes
open and shut, the kite is immediately hauled
down, a photograplier takes the holder con-
taining the exposed plate and disappears with
it into the wheeled dark room to appear, five
minutes later, with a picture of the German
trenches.
The change that aeroplanes have produced
in warfare is strikingly illustrated by the fact
that in the Russo-Japanese V\'ar the Japanese
fought for weeks and sacrificed thousands of
men in order to capture 203-Metre Hill, not,
mmd you. because of its strategic importance,
but in order that they might effectively con-
trol the fire of their siege mortars, which were
endeavouring to reach the battleships in the
harbour of Port Arthur. To-day that informa-
tion would be furnished in an hour by aero-
plane-;. From dawn to dark aircraft hang
o\cr the enemy's positions, spotting his bat-
teries, mapping his trenches, noting the move-
ments 01 troops and trains, yet with a storm of
shrapnel bursting about them constantly, I
e :.
e 1
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IJ
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 201
remember seeing, in Champagne, a French
aeroplane rocking lazily over the German
lines, and of counting sixty shrapnel clouds
floating about it at one time. So thick were
the patches of fleecy white that they looked
like tlic white tufts on a sky-blue coverlet.
The shooting of the German verticals (anti-
aircraft guns) has steadily im^^roved as a result
of the constant practice they have had, so
that halt the time there are ragged rents in the
French planes caused by fragments of exploding
shells. So deafening is the racket of the motor
and propeller, however, that it is impossible to
hear a shell unless it bursts at very close range,
so that the aviators, intent on their work, are
often utterly unconscious of how near they are
to death. It is very curious how close shells
can explode to a machine and yet not cripple
it enough to bring it down. A pilot flying over
the German lines in Flanders had his leg
smashed by a bursting shell, which, strangely
enough, did no damage to the planes or motor.
The wounded man fainted from the pain and
shock and his machine, left uncontrolled, began
to plunge earthward. Recovering conscious-
ness, the aviator, despite the excruciating pain
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VIVE LA FRANCE !
which he was suffering, retained sufficient
strength and presence of mind to get his
machine under control and head it back for the
French lines, though shrapnel was bursting all
about him. He came quietly and gracefully to
ground at his home aviation field and then fell
over his steering lever unconscious.
No nervous man is wanted in the air service
and the moment that a flier shows signs that
his nerves are becoming affected he is given a
furlough and ordered to take a rest. So great
arc the mental strain, the exposure, and the noise,
however, that probably twenty-five per cent, of
the aviators lose their nerve completely and
have to leave the service altogether. The great
French aviation school at Buc, near Paris, turns
out pilots at the rate of one hundred and sixty
a month. The first lessons are given on a
machine with clipped wings, known as " the
penguin," which cannot rise from the ground,
and from this the men are gradually advanced,
stage by stage, from machines as safe and steady
and well-mannered as riding-school horses,
until they at last become qualified pilots,
capable of handling the quick-turning, un-
certain-tempered broncos of the air. Provided
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 203
he has sound nerves, a strong constitution, and
average intelligence, a man who has never been
in a machine before can become a qualified pilot
in thirty days. Since the war began the French
air service has attracted the reckless, the daring,
and the adventurous from the four corners of
the earth as iron filings are attracted by a
magnet. Wearing on the collars of their silver-
blue uniforms the gold wings of the flying corps
arc cow-punchers, polo-players, prize-fighters,
professional bicycle riders, big game hunters,
soldiers of fortune, young men who bear famous
names, and other young men whose names are
notorious rather than famous. In one squad-
rilla on the Champagne front I found a Texan
cowboy and adventurer named Hall ; Elliott
Cowdin, the Long Island polo-player ; and
Charpentier, the heavj-weight champion of
France. For youngsters who are seeking ex-
citement and adventure, no sport in the world
can offer the thrills of the chasse au Taube. To
drive with one hand a machine that travels
through space at a speed double that of the
fastest express train and with the other hand to
operate a mitrailleuse that spits death at the
rate of a thousand shots a minute ; to twist and
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204
VIVE LA FRANCE !
turn and loop and circle two miles above the
tjarth in an endeavour to overcome an adversary
as quick-witted and quick-acting as yourself,
knowing that if you are victorious the victory
is due to your skill and courage alone — there
you have a game which makes all other sports
appear ladylike and tame.
\\ hen an aeroplane armed with a mitrailleuse
attacks an enemy machine the pilot immediately
manoeuvres so as to permit the gunner observer
to bring his gun into action. In order to make
the bullets " spread " and ensure that at least
some of the many shots get home, the gunner
swings his weapon up and down, with a kind
of chopping motion, so that, viewed from the
front of the machine, the stream of bullets,
were they visible, would be shaped like a fan.
At the same time the gunner swings his weapon
gently around, covering with a stream of lead
the space through which his enemy will have
to pass. Sliould the enemy machine be below
the other, then to get clear he would possibly
dive under his opponent in a sweeping turn.
By this manoeuvre the gunner is placed in a
position where he cannot bring his weapon to
hear and he will have to turn in pursuit before
■
1-
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 205
his gun can be brought into action again.
From this it will be seen that an aeroplane
gunner does not take dehberate aim, as would
a man armed with a rifle, but instead fills the
air in the path of his opponent with showers of
bullets in the hope that some of them will find
the mark. Should both machines be armed
with machine guns, as is now nearly always the
case, victory is often a question of quick
manoeuvring combined with a considerable
clement of luck. To win out in this aerial
warfare, a man has to combine the quickness of
a fencer with the coolness of a big game shot.
One of the greatest dangers the military
aviator has to face is landing after night has
fallen. Though every machine has a small
motor, worked by the wind, which generates
enough power for a small searchlight, the light
is not sufficiently rowerful to be of much assis-
tance in gauging the distance from the ground.
Sunset is, therefore, always an anxious time on
the aviation fields, nor is the anxiety at an end
until all the fliers are accounted for. As the
sun begins to sink into the W est the returning
aviators one by one appear, black dots against
ihe crimson sky. One by one they come swoop-
M
206
\ IVE LA FRANCE
ing down from the heavens and come to rest
upon the ground. Twilight merges into dusk
and dusk turns into darkness, but one of the
flying men has not yet come. The four corners
of the aviation field are marked with great flares
of kerosene, that the late comer may be guided
home, and down the middle of the field lanterns
are laid out in the form of a huge arrow with
the head pointing into the wind, while search-
lights, mounted on motor-cars, alternately
sweep field and sky with their white beams.
Anxiety is wTitten plainly on the face of every
one. Have the Boches brought him down ?
Has he lost his way ? Or has he been forced
from engine trouble or lack of petrol to descend
elsewhere .? " Hark ! " exclaims some one
suddenly. " He's coming ! " and in the sudden
hush that ensues you hear, from somewhere in
the upper darkness, a motor's deep, low throb.
The vertical beams of the searchhghts fall and
flood the level plain with yellow radiance.
The hum of the motor rises into a roar
and then, when just overhead, abruptly
stops, and dowTi through the darkness shdes a
great bird which is darker than the dark-
ness and settles silently upon the plain.
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li
CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 207
The last of the chickens has come home to
roost.
In addition to the aeroplanes kept upon the
front for purposes of bombardment, photo-
graphy, artillery control, and scouting, several
squadrillas are kept constantly on duty in the
vicinity of Paris and certain other French
cities for the purpose of driving oflF marauding
Taulxs or ZeppeUns. Just as the streets of Paris
are patrolled by gendarmes, so the air-planes
above the city are patrolled, both night and
day, by guarding aeroplanes. To me there was
something wonderfully inspiring in the thought
that all through the hours of darkness these
aerial watchers were sweeping in great circles
above the sleeping city, guarding it from the
death that comes in the night. For tlie benefit
,.f my American readers 1 may say that the
people of the United States do not fully under-
stand the Zeppelin raid problem with which
those entrusted with the defence of Paris and
of London are confronted. The ZeppeHns, it
must be remembered, never come out unless
it is a very dark night, and then they pass over
the lines at a height of two miles or more,
descending only when they are above the city
f^^'i^*^*^i]
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which they intend to attack. They slowly,
silently settle down until their officers can get
a view of their target and then the bombs
begin to drop. This is usually the first warning
that tlie townspeople have that Zeppelins are
abroad, though it occasionally happens that
they have been seen or heard crossing the hnes,
in which case the city is warned by telephone,
the anti-aircraft guns prepare for action, and
the Ughts in the streets and houses are put out.
Should the ZeppeHns succeed in getting above
the city, the guarding aeroplanes go up after
them and as soon as the searchlights spot
them the t'uns open fire with shrapnel. The
raiders are rarely fired on by the anti-aircraft
guns while they are hovering over the city,
however, as experience has shown that more
people are killed by falling shell spHnters than
by the enemy's bombs. Nor do the French
aeroplanes dare to make serious attacks until
the Zeppelin is clear of the city, for it is not
difficult to imagine the destruction that would
result were one of these monsters, five hundred
feet long and weighing thirty-six thousand
pounds, to be destroyed and its flaming debris
to fall upon the city. The problem that faces
.*^?%,
CONFI.ICr IN THK CIXHDS 209
the French authorities, therefore, is stopping
the Zeppchns before they reach Paris, and it
speaks volumes for the efficiency of the French
air service that there has been no ZeppeUn
raid on the French capital for nearly a year.
In order to detect the approach of Zeppelins
the French mihtary authorities have recently
adopted the novel expedient of establishing
microphone stations at several points in and
about Paris, these dehcately attuned instru-
ments recording with unfailing accuracy the
throb of a ZeppeHn's or an aeroplane's pro-
pellers long before it can be heard by the
human ear.
For the protection of London the British
Government has built an aerial navy ctmsisting
of two types of aircraft — scouts and battle-
planes. Practically the only requirement for
the scouting planes is that they must have a
>peed of not less than one hundred miles an
hour and a fuel capacity for at least a six-hour
flight, thus giving them a cruising radius of
three hundred miles. That is, they will be
able to raid many Grerman ports and cities
and return with ease to their base in England.
Their small size — they are only thirty feet
2IO
\ I\'F. LA FRANCE
across the wings — and great speed will make
them almost impossible to hit and it is ex-
pected that anti-aircraft guns will be practi-
cally useless against them. 'I'hey will constantly
circle in the higher levels, as near the Zeppehn
bases as they can get, and the minute they sec
the giants emerging from their hangar^ they
will be of! to England to give the alarm. Their
speed being double that of a Zeppelin, they
will have reached England long before the
raider arrives. Then the new " Canada " type,
each carrying a ton of bombs, will go out to
meet the Germans. These giant biplanes, one
hundred and two feet across the wings, with
two motors developing three hundred and
twenty horse-power, have a speed of more
than ninety miles an hour and can overtake a
Zeppelin as a motor-cycle policeman can over-
liaul a limousine. 'I'hey are fitted with the new
device for ensuring accuracy in bomb-dropping
and, with their superior speed, will hang
above the monger dirigibles, as a hawk hangs
above a hen-roost, plumping shell after shell
into the great silk sausage quivering below them.
Both the French and British Governments
now have a considerable number of hydro-
CONFLICT IN THF CLOCI^S 211
aeroplanes in commission. 'I'hcsc amphibious
craft, which are driven by two motors of one
hundred and sixty horse-power each and have
a speed of about seventy-five miles an hour,
arc designed primarily for the hunting of sub-
marines. Though a submarine cannot be seen
from the deck of a vessel, an aviator can see it
even though it is submerged twenty feet, and a
bomb dropped near it will cave its sides in by
the mere force of the explosion, particularly if
that bomb is loaded with two hundred pf)unds
of melinite, as are those carried by the French
hydro-aeroplanes.
But the most novel of all the uses to which
the aircraft have been put in this war is that
of dropping spies in the enemy's territory. On
numerous occasions French and British aviators
have flown across the German lines, carrying
with them an intelligence officer disguised
as a peasant or a farm-hand, and have landed
him at some remote spot where the descent
of an aeroplane is scarcely likely to attract
the attention of the military authorities.
As soon as the aviator has landed his paSbcnger
he ascends again, with the understanding, how-
ever, that he will return to the same spot a
'I
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212
VIVE LA FRANCE !
day, or two days, or a week later, to pick up
the spy and carry him back to the French lines.
'Fhe exploits of some of these secret agents thus
dropped from the sky upon enemy soil would
make the wildest fiction seem probable and
tame. One French othcer, thus landed behind
the German front in Flanders, succeeded in
slowly working his way right across Belgium,
gathering information as he went as to the
resources of the Germans and thf^ disposition of
their troops, only to be caught just as he was
crossing the frontier into Holland. 'Fhough
the Germans expressed unbounded admiration
for his coolness, courage, and daring, he was
none the less a spy. He died before the rifles
of a firing-party.
It has repeatedly been said that in this war
the spirit of chivalry does not exist, and, so
far as the land forces are concerned, this is
largely true. But chivalry still exists among
the fighters of the air. If, for example, a French
aviator is forced to descend in the German
lines, either because his machine has been
damaged by gun-fire or from engine trouble, a
German aviator will fly over the French lines,
often amid a storm of shrapnel, and drop a
' *''*■%,
CONFLICT IN THE CLOIDS 213
litilc cloth bag which contains a note recording'
the name of the missing man, or if not his
name the number of his machine, whether he
survived, and if so whether he is wounded.
Attached to the " message bag " are long
pennants of coloured cloth, which flutter out
and attract the attention of the men in the
neighbourhood, who run out and pick up the
bag when it lands. It is at once taken to the
nearest officer, who opens it and telephones the
message it contains to aviation headquarters,
so that it not infrequently happens that the
late of a flier is known to his comrades within
a few hours after he has set out from the
aviation field. Perhaps the prettiest exhibition
of chivalry which the war has produced was
evoked by the death of the famous French
aviator, Adolphe Pcgoud, who was killed by a
German aviator whom he attacked during a
reconnaissance near Petite Croix, in Alsace.
The next day a German aeroplane, flying at a
great height, appeared over Chavannes, an
Alsatian village on the old frontier, where
Pogoud was buried, and dropped a wreath
which bore the inscription : " To Pegoud, who
died like a hero, from his adversary."
VII. THE RED BADGE OF MERCY
CORPORAL EMILE DUPONT, hav-
ing finished a most unappetizing and
unsatisfying breakfast, consisting of a
cup of lukewarm chicory and a half-loaf of
soggy bread, emerged on all fours from the
hole in the ground which for many months had
been his home and, standing upright in the
trench, hghted a cigarette. At that instant some-
thing came screaming out of nowhere to burst,
in a cloud of acrid smoke and a shower of
steel sphnters, directly over the trench in
which Emile was standing. Immediately the
sky seemed to fall upon Emile and crush him.
When he returned to consciousness a few
seconds later he found himself crumpled up in
an angle of the trench like an empty kit-bag that
has been hurled into a corner of a room. He
felt curiously weak and nauseated ; he ached
in every bone in his body ; his head throbbed
and pounded until he thought that the top of
his skull was coming oflp. Still, he was ahve,
and that was something. He fumbled for the
214
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 215
cigarette that he had been lighting, but there
was a curious sensation of numbness in his
right hand. He did not seem to be able to move
it. Very slowly, very painfully he turned his
head so that his eyes travelled out along his
blue-sleeved arm until they reached the point
where his hand ought to be. But the hand
wasn't there. It had quite disappeared. His
WTist lay in a pool of something crimson and
warm and sticky which widened rapidly as he
looked at it. His hand was gone, there was no
doubting that. Still, it didn't interest him
greatly ; in fact, it might have been some other
man's hand for all he cared. His head throbbed
Hke the devil and he was very, very tired.
Rather dimly he heard voices and, as through a
haze, saw figures bending over him. He felt
some one tugging at the little first-aid packet
which every soldier carries in the breast of his
tunic, he felt something being tied very tightly
around his arm above the elbow, and finally
he had a vague recollection of being dragged
into a dug-out, where he lay for hours while
the shell-storm raged and howled outside.
Toward nightfall when the bombardment had
died down, two soldiers, wearing on their
111
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N!
2l6
VIVE LA FRANCE !
arms white brassards with red crosses, Ufted
him on to a stretcher and carried him between
interminable walls of brown earth to another
and a larger dug-out which he recogni'/.ed as a
poste dc secours. After an hour of waiting,
because there were other wounded men who
had to be attended to first, the stretcher on
which Emile lay was lifted on to a table, over
which hung a lantern. A bearded man, wear-
ing the cap of a medical officer, and with a
white apron up to his neck, briskly unwound
the bandages which hid the place where Emile's
right hand should have been. " It'll have to be
taken oflt a bit further up, moti brave''' said the
surgeon, in much the same tone that a tailor
would use in discussing the shortening of a
coat. " You seem to be in pretty fair shape,
though, so we'll just give you a new dressing,
and send you along to the field ambulance,
where they have more facilities for amputating
than we have here." Despite the pain,
which had now become agonizing, Emile
watch'd with a sort of detached admiration
the neatness and despatch with which the sur-
geon wound the white bandages around the
wound. It reminded him of a British soldier
«V
W.'.^'
--lu jr» ~ A ^Ai^~ 'Wiiip-"
■'
\
t
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 217
putting on his puttees. " Just a moment, my
friend," said the surgeon, when the dressing
was completed, " we'll give you a jab of this
before you go. to frighten away the tetanus,"
and in the muscles of his shoulder Emile felt the
prick of hypodermic needle. An orderly
tied to a b itlon of his coat a pink tag on which
something— he could not see what— had been
scrav^ed by the surgeon, and two hrancardiers
lifted the stretcher and carried him out into
the darkness. From the swaying of the
stretcher and the muffled imprecations of the
bearers, he gathered that he was being taken
across the ploughed field which separated the
trenches from the highway where the ambu-
lances were waiting. "This cleans 'em up
for to-night," said one of the bearers, as he
slipped the handles of the stretcher into the
grooved supports of the ambulance and pushed
it smoothly home. "Thank God for that,"
said the ambulance driver, as he viciously
cranked his car. " I thought I was going to be
kept here all night. It's time we cleared out
anyway. The Boches spotted me with a rocket
they sent up a while back, and they've been
dropping shells a little too close to be pleasant.
if
\ i
f.
ill
2l8
VIVE LA FRANCE !
Well, s'long. When I get this bunch delivered
I'm going to turn in and get a night's sleep."
The road, being paved with cobblestones,
was not as smooth as it should have been for
wounded men. Emile, who had been awakened
to full consciousness by the night air ?nd by
a drink of brandy one of the orderlies at the
foste de secours had given him, felt something
warm and sticky falling . . . drip . . . drip
. . . drip . . . upon his face. In the dim
light he was at first unable to disccncr where it
came from. 'I'hen he saw. It was dripping
through the brown canvas of the stretcher that
hung above him. He tried to call to the
ambulance driver, but his voice was lost in the
noise of the machine. The field-hospital was
only three miles behind the trench in which he
had been wounded, but by the time he arrived
there, what with the jolting and the pain and
the terrible thirst which comes from loss of
blood and that ghastly drip . . . drip . . . drip
in his face, Emile was in a state of both mental
and physical collapse. They took him into a
large tenc, dimly lighted by lanterns which
showed him many other stretchers with silent
or groaning forms, all ticketed hke himself.
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 219
lying upon them. After considerable delay a
young officer came around with a notebook
and looked at the tag they had tied on him at
the dressing-station. On it was scrawled the
word " urgent." That admonition didn't pre-
vent Emile's having to wait two hours before
he was taken into a tent so briUiantly illumi-
nated by an arc-lamp that the glare hurt his
eyes. W hen ihey laid him on a narrow white
cable so that the Hght fell full upon him he felt
as though he were on the stage of a theatre and
the spot-hght had been turned upon him. An
orderly with a sharp knife deftly slashed away
the sleeve of Emile's coat, leavin'j the arm bare
to the shoulder, while another orderly clapped
over his mouth and nose a sort of funnel.
\\ hen he returned to consciousness be found
himself again in an ambulance rocking and
swaying over those agonizing pave roads. The
throbbing of his head and the pain in his arm
and the pitching of the vehicle made him
nauseated. There were three other wounded
men in the ambulance and they had been
nauseated too. It was not a pleasant journey.
After what seemed to Emile and his companions
in misery an interminable time, the ambulance
220
\I\K LA IRANCE!
came to a stop in front of a railway station.
At least it had once been a railway station,
but over the door between the drooping Red
Cross flags, was the sign " H- pital d'Kvacuation
No. 31." 'I wo brancardirrs lifted out Emile's
stretcher— the same one, by the way, on which
he had been carried from the trenches twenty-
four hours before— and set it down in what
had been the station waiting-room. It was
still a waiting-room, but all those who wtre
so patiently and uncomplainingly waiting in it
were wounded. 1 wo women, wearing white
smocks and caps and with the ever-present
red cross upon their sleeves, came in carrying
trays loaded with cups of steaming soup.
While an orderly supported Emile's head one
of the women held a cup of soup to his hps.
He drank it greedily. It was the best thing he
had ever tasted and he said so. Then they
gave him a glass of harsh, red wine. After that
he felt much better. After a time a doctor
came in and glanced at the tags which had
been tied on him at the poste de secours and
at the field hospital. " You've a little fever,
my lad," said he, " but I guess you can stand
the trip to Paris. You'll be better off there
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 221
than you would be here." If Emile lives to
be a hundred he will never forget that journey.
It was made in a box-car which had been con-
verted to the use of the wounded by putting
in racks to hold the stretchers and cutting
windows in the sides. In the centre was a
?mall stove on which the orderly in charge
boiled tea. In the car were fifteen other
wounded men. On the journey four of them
died. The car, which was without springs,
rolled like a ship in a storm. The jolcing was
far worse than that in the ambulances on the
;^ave roads had been. Emilc's head reeled from
weariness and exhaustion ; his arm felt as
though it were being held in a white-hot flame ;
he was attacked by the intolerable thirst which
characterizes amputation cases, and begged for
water, and when it was given him pleaded
desperately for more, more, rnore. Most of
the time he was of! his head and babbled
incoherently of foolish, inconsequential things.
It took twenty hours for the hospital train to
reach Paris, for a great movement of troops
was in progress, and when well men arc being
rushed to the front the wounded ones who are
coming away Crom it must wait. When the
III
i I
II
222
VIVE LA FRANCE !
train finally pulled under the sooty glass roof
of the Paris station, Emile was hovering be-
tween life and death. He had a hazy, in-
distinct recollection of being taken from the
ill-smelling freight-car to an ambulance — the
third in which he had been in less than forty-
eight hours ; of skimming pleasantly, silently
over smooth pavements ; of the ambulance
entering the porte-cochere of a great white
building that looked like a hotel or school.
Here he was not kept waiting. Nurses with
skilful fingers drew off his clothes — the filthy,
blood-soaked, mud-stained, vermin-infested,
foul-smelling garments that he had not had
oflF for many weeks. He was lowered, ever so
gently, into a tub filled with warm water.
Bon Dieu, but it felt good ! It was the first
warm bath that he had had for more than a year.
It was worth being wounded for. Then a
p;r.r of flannel pyjamas, a fresh, soft bed, such
as he had not known since the war began, and
pink-checked nurses in crisp, white linen slip-
ping about noiselessly. While Emile lay back
on his pillows and puffed a cigarette a doctor
came in and dressed his wound. " Don't worrv
about yourself, my man," he said cheerily,
THE RED liADGE OF MERCY 223
«♦ you'll get along finely. In a week or so we'll
be sending you back to your family." Where-
upon Corporal Emile Dupont turned on his
pillow with a great sigh of content. He
wondered dimly, as he fell asleep, if it would be
hard to find work which a one-armed man
could do.
From the imaginary but wholly typical case
just given, in which we have traced the course
of a wounded man from the spot where he fell
to the final hospital, it will be seen that the
system of the Service dc Sante Militaire, as
the medical service of the French army is
known, though cumbersome and complicated
in certain respects, nevertheless works— and
works well. In understanding the French
system it is necessary to bear in mind that the
wounded man has to be shifted through two
army zones, front and rear, both of which are
under the direct control of the commander-
in-chief, to the interior zone of the country,
with its countless hospitals, which is under
the direction of the Ministry of War.
As soon as a soldier falls he drags himself,
if he is able, to some sheltered spot, or his
h
it
--4
\I\K LA FRANCK!
comrades carry him there, and with the " first-
aid " packet, carried in the breast pocket of
the tunic, an endeavour is made to give the
wound temporary treatment. In the British
service this " first-aid " kit consists of a small
tin box, not much larger than a cigarette case,
containing a bottle of iodine crystals and a
bottle of alcohol wrapped up in a roll of aseptic
bandage gauze. Meanwhile word has been
passed along the line that the services of the
surgeon are needed, for each regim<nt has
one and sometiincs two medical oflrtcers on
duly in the trenches. It may so happen that
tlie trench section has its own poste de secours,
or first-aid dressing-station, in which case the
man is at once taken there. The medical officer
dresses the man's wound, perhaps gives him
a hypodermic injrcii. ii to lessen the pain, and
otherwise makes him as comfortable as possible
under the circumstances. His wounds tem-
porarily dressed, if there is a dug-out at hand,
he is taken into it. If not, he is laid in such
shelter as the trench affords, and there he
usually has to lie until night comes and he
can be removed in comparative safety ; for,
particularly in the flat country of Artois and
THE KKI) BADGE OF MERCY
225
Flanders, it is out of the question to remove
the wounded except under the screen of dark-
ness, and even then it is frequently an ex-
tremtly hazardous proceeding, for the German
gunners apparently do their best to drop
their shells on the ambulances and stretcher
parties. As soon as night falls a dressing-
station is established at a point as close as
possible behind the trenches, the number of
surgeons, dressers, and stretcher-bearers sent out
depending upon the number of casualties as
reported by telephone from the trenches to
headquarters. The wounded man is trans-
ported on a stretcher or a wheeled litter to the
dressing-station, where his wounds are ex-
amined by the light of electric torches and, if
necessary, redressed. If he has any fractured
bones they are made fast in splints or pieces
of zinc or iron wire — anything that will enable
him to stand tran.portation. 'i'hough the
dressing-station is, whertVer possible, estab-
lished in a farmhouse, in a grove, behind a
wall, or such other protection as the region may
afford, it is, nevertheless, often in extreme
danger. I recall one case, in Flanders, where
the flashing of the torches attracted the atten-
I
^1 . i r'l I > *
226
VIVE LA FRANCE !
tion of the German gunners, who dropped a
shell squarely into a dressing-station, killing all
the surgeons and stretcher-bearers, and putting
half a dozen of the wounded out of their
misery. As soon as the wounded man has
passed through the dressing-station, he is
carried, usually over very rough ground, to the
point on the rosd where the motor-ambulances
are waiting and is whirled off to the division
ambulance, which corresponds to the field-
hospital of the British and American armies.
These division ambulances (it should be borne
in mind that the term ambulance in French
means " military hospital ") do as complete
work as can be expected so near the front.
'Fhey are usually set up only four or five miles
behind the firing-line, and have a regular
medical and nursing staflF, instruments, and,
in some cases. X-ray apparatus for operations.
As a rule, only light emergency operations are
performed in these ambulances of the front —
light skull trepanning, removal of splintered
bones, disinfection, and immobilizing of the
wounded parts.
At the beginning of the war it was an ac-
cepted principle of the French army surgeons
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 227
not to operate at the front, but simply to dress
the wounds so as to permit of speedy trans-
portation to the rear, for the division am-
bulances, being without heat or light or steri-
lizing plants of their owj, had no facilities for
many urgent operations or for night work.
Hence, though there was no lack of surgical aid
at the front, major operations were not possible,
and thousands of men died who, could they
have been operated or immediately, might have
been saved. This grave fault in the French
medical service has now been remedied, how-
ever, by the automobile surgical formations
created by Doctor Marcille. Their purpose is
to bring within a few miles of the spot where
fighting is in progress and where men are being
wounded the equivalent of a great city emer-
gency hospital, with its own sterihzation plant,
and an operating-room healed and Ughted
powerfully night and day. This equipment is
extremely mobile, ready to begin work even in
the open country within an hour of its arrival,
and capable of moving on with the same rapidity
to any point where its services may be required.
The arrangement of these operating-rooms (m
wheels is as compact and ingenious as a PuU-
5|
■it
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228 VIVE LA FRANCE!
man sleeping-car. The sterilization plant,
which works by superheated steam, is on an
automobile chassis, the surgeons taking their
instruments, compresses, aprons, and blouses
immediately from one of the six iron sheets of
the autoclave as they operate. Six operations
can be carried on without stopping — and during
the sixth the iron sheets are resterilized to begin
again. The same boiler heats a smaller auto-
clave for sterilizing rubber gloves and water,
aid also, by mear of a powerful radiator,
heats the operating-room. 'This is an im-
permeable tent, with a large glass skylight fur
day and a 200-candle power electric light for
night, the motor generating the electricity.
Another car contains the radiograph plant,
while the regular ambulances provide pharmacy
and other supplies and see to the further
transportation of the wounded who have been
operated on. Of seventy operations, which
would have all been impossible without these
surgical automobile units, fifty-live were suc-
cessful. In cases of abdominal wounds, which
have usually been fatal in previous wars, fifty
per cent, of the operations thus performed
saved the lives of the wounded.
M^^
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 229
Leaving the zone of actual operations, the
wounded man now enters the army rear zone,
where, at the heads of the lines of communi-
cation, hospital trains or hospital canal-boats
are waiting for him. The beginning of the
war found France wholly unprepared as re-
gards modernly equipped hospital trains, of
which she possessed only five, while Russia
had thirty-two, Austria thirty-three, and
Germany forty. Thanks to the energy of the
great French railway companies, the number
has been somewhat increased, but France still
has mainly to rely on improvised sanitary trains
for the transport of her wounded. There are
in operation about one hundred and fifty of
these improvised trains, made up, when possible,
of the long luggage vans of what were before
the war the international express trains. As
these cars arc well hung, are heated, have soft
W'estinghouse brakes, and have corridors which
permit of the doctors going from car to car
while the train is in motion, they answer the
purpose to which they have been put tolerably
well. But when heivy fighting is in progress,
rolhng stock of every description has to be
utilized for the transport of the wounded.
'! M
it
■ i
JJh.
'^^
230
VIVE LA FRANCE !
Thosf who can sit up without too much dis-
comfort arc put in ordinary passenger cars.
But in addition to these the Service de Santi-
ha? been compelled to use thousands of ^oods
and cattle trucks glassed up at the sides and with
a stove in the middle. The stretcb';rs containing
the most serious cases are, by means of loops
into which the handles of the stretchers fit,
laid in two rows, one above the other, at the
ends of each truck while those who are able to
sit up are gathered in the centre. Each truck is
in charge of an orderly who keeps water and
soups constantly heated on the stove. Any one
who has travelled for any distance in a -jooJ-sor
cattle t uck will readily appreciate, however, how
great must be the sufferings of the wounded
men thus transported. Taking advantage of
the network of canals and rivers which covers
France, the medical authorities of the army
have also utilized canal-boats for the transport
of the blesses — a method of transportation
which, though slow, is very easy. Every few
hours these hospital trains or boats come to
" infirmary stations," established by the Red
Cross, where the wounded arc given food and
drink, and their dressing is looked after,
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 231
while at the very end of the army zones there
are " regular stations," where the " evacua-
tion hospitals " are placed. Here is where the
sorting system comes in. There are wounded
whose condition has become so aggravated that
it is out of the question for them to stand a
longer journey, and these remain. There are
lightly wounded, who, with proper attention,
will be as well as ever in a few days, and these
are sent to a depot des eclopes, or, as the soldiers
term it, a " limper's halt." Then tlierc are the
others who, if they are to recover, will require
long and careful treatment and difficult opera-
tions. These go on to the final hospitals of
the interior zone : mihtary hospitals, auxiliary
hospitals, civil hospitals militarized, and " be-
nevolent hospitals," such as the great American
Ambulance at Neuilly.
No account of the work of caring for the
wounded would be complete without at least
passing mention of the American Ambulance,
which, founded by Americans, with an American
jtaflE and an American equipment, and main-
tained by American generosity, has come to
be recognized as the highest type of military
hospital in existence. At the beginning of the
232
V 1\I- LA FRANCE !
war, Americans in Paris, inspired by rhe record
of the American Ambulance in 1870, and lore-
seeing the needs of the enormous number of
wounded which would soon come pouring in,
conceived the idea of establishing a mlHtary
hospital for the treatment of the wounded,
irrespective of nationality. The French Govern-
ment placed at their disposal a large and nearly
completed school building in the suburb of
Neuilly, just outside the walls of Paris. Be-
fore the war had been in progress a month this
building had been transformed into perhaps
the most up-to-the-minute mihtary hospital
in Europe, equipped with X-ray apparatus,
ultra violet-ray steriHzing plants, a giant
magnet for removing fragments of shell from
wounds, a pathological laboratory, and the
finest department of dental surgery in the
world. The feats of surgical legerdemain per-
formed in this latter department are, indeed,
almost beyond belief. The American dental
surgeons assert — and they have repeatedly
made their assertion good — that, even though
a man's entire face has been blown away, they
can construct a new and presentable counte-
nance, provided the hinges of the jaws remain.
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 233
Beginning with 170 beds, by November
191 5 the hospital had 600 beds and in addi-
tion has organized an " advanced hospital,"
with 250 beds, known as Hospital B, at Juilly,
which is maintained through the generosity of
Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney ; :^ field hospital,
of the same pattern as that used by the United
States Army, with 108 beds ; and two con-
valescent hospitals at St. Cloud ; the staff
of this remarkable organization comprising
doctors, surgeons, graduate and auxiliary nurses,
orderHes, stretcher-bearers, ambulance drivers,
cooks, and other employees to the number of
seven hundred. Perhaps the most picturesque
feature of the American hospital is its remark-
able motor-ambulance service, which consists
of 130 cars and 160 drivers. The ambulances,
which are for the most part Ford cars with
specially designed bodies, have proved so ex-
tremely practical and efficient that the type
has been widely copied by the Allied armies.
They serve where they arc most needed, being
sent out in units (each unit consisting of a
staff car, a supply car, and five ambulances)
upon the requisition of the mihtary authorities.
The young men who drive the ambulances
234
VI\ K LA FkANCK !
and who, with a very few exceptions, not only
5erve without pay but even pay their own
passage from America and provide their own
uniforms, represent all that is best in American
life . among them are men from the great uni-
versities both Kast and West, men from the
hunt clubs of Long Island and Virginia, lawyers,
novelists, polo-play<.'rs, big game hunters, cow-
puncliers. \\hilf the inspector of the ambulance
service is a former assistant treasurer of the
I'nited States. American Ambulance units
are stationed at many points on the western
battle-line — I have seen them at work in
I'landers, in the Argonne, and in Alsace —
the risks taken by tiie drivers in their work
of bringing in the wounded and their cool-
ness under fire having won for them among
the soldiers the admiring title of " bullet
biters."
The British system of handling the wounded
is upon the same general lines as that of the
French, the chief difference being in the method
of sorting, which is the basis of all medical corps
work in this war.
Sorting, as practised by the British, starts
at the very first step in the progress of a
rilK RED BADGE OF MERCY 235
wounded man, which is the dressing-station in
or immediately behind the trenches, where
only those cases absolutely demanding it arc
dressed and where only the most imperative
operations arc performed. The second step
is the field hospital, where all but a few of the
sHght wounds are dressed, and where opera-
tions that must be done before the men can be
passed farther back are performed. The third
step is the clearing hospital, at the head of rail-
way communication. Mere the man receives
the 1 minimum of medical attention before being
passed on to the hospital train which conveys
him to one of the great base hospitals on the
coast, where every one, whether seriously or
sUghily wounded, can at last receive treat-
ment. To the wounded Tommy, the base
hospital is the half-way house to home, where he
is cared for until he is able to stand the journey
across the Channel to England.
The real barometer of battle is the clearing
hospital, for one can always tell by the number
of cases coming in whether there is heavy
fighting in progress. As both field and clear-
ing hospitals move with the armies, they must
not onlv alwavs get rid of their wouuded at
i
236
\I\E LA FR.Wd. !
tlic earliest possible moment, but they must
always be prepared for quick movements back-
ward or forward. Kither a retreat or an offen-
sive movement necessitates quick action on
the part of the Army Medical Corps, for
it is a big job to dismantle a great hospital,
pack it up. and start the motor-transport
within an hour after the order to move is
received. It would be a big job without the
wounded.
In the French lines the hdpital d'l'vacuation
is frequently established in a g. ods station or
warehouse in the midst of the railway yard-,
so as to facilitate the loading of the hospital
trains. This arrangement has its drawbacks,
however, for the hospital is liable to be bom-
barded by aeroplanes or artillery without warn-
ing, as it is a principle recognized— and prac-
tised — by all the belligerent nations that it is
perfectly legitimate to shell a station or rail-
way base in order to interfere with the troops,
suppHes, and ammunition going forward to
the armies in the field. That a hospital is
quartered in the station is unfortunate but
must be disregarded. At Dunkirk, for ex-
ample, which is a fortified town and a base
^ s c
u it O
a Z
— ^
u o ^
jl
THK KEI) BADGK OK MKKCY 237
oi I'lc very tirst iinporuncc, there was nothing
unethical,' from a military view-point, in the
Germans shelling the railway yar is, even though
a number <>t wounded in the hospital there
lost their live^. The British avoid this danger
by e>tablishing their clearing hospitals in the
outskirts 01 the Krminu- towns, and as tar
from the station as possible, whieli, however,
necessitates one more transfer for tlie wounded
man.
In itii- uar the progress made in the science
ol healing has kept pace with, if indeed it has
not outdistanced, the progress made in the
scieMCe of destruction. There is, for example,
the -olution of hypochlorite of soda, introduced
by l»(.ctor Dakin and Doctor .Mexis Carrel,
whiclu though not a new invention, is being
u^ed with marvellous results for the irrigati.>n
of wounds and the prevention of suppuration.
There i-^ the spinal anaesthesia, used niuiiwy in
the ditlicult abdominal cases, a minute quantity
of wliich, injected into the spine of the patient,
causes all sensation to disappear up to the
arms, so that, provided he is prevented by
a screen from seeing what is going on, an
operation below that level may be performed
■'::(_ '^^ !
'•.I
238
VIVE LA FRANCE !
while the patient, wholly unconscious of what
is happening, is reading a paper or smoking a
cigarette. Owing to failure to disinfect the
wounds at the front, many of the cases reach-
ing the hospitals in the early days of the war
were found to be badly septic, the infection
being due, curiously enough, to the nature of
the soil of the country, the region of the Aisne,
for example, apparently being saturated with
the tetanus germ. So the doctors invented an
antitetanus serum, with which a soldier can
inoculate himself, and as a resuh, the cases of
tetanus have been reduced by half. It was
found that many wounded men failed to re-
cover because of the minute pieces of shell re-
maining in their bodies, so there was intro-
duced the giant magnet which, when conncc ted
with the probe in the surgeon's hand, unerringly
attracts and draws out any fragments of metal
that may remain in the wound. Still another
ingenious invention produced by the war i- the
bell, or buzzer, which rings when the surgeon's
probe approaches a foreign substance.
Though before the war began European
army surgeons were thoroughly conversant
with the best methods of treating shell, sabre,
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 239
and bullet wounds and the innumerable
diseases peculiar to armies, the war has produced
one weapon of which they had never so much
as heard before, and the effects of which
they were at first wholly unable to combat.
I refer to the as hvxiating g^s. If you fail
to understand wlu.i "gassing" means, just
listen to this description by a British army
surgeon :
" In a typical ' gassed ' case the idea of
impending suffocation predominates. Every
muscle of respiration is called upon to do its
utmost to avert the threatened doom. The
imperfect aeration of the blood arising from
obstructed respiration causes oftentimes intense
blucness and clamminess of the face, while froth
and expectoration blow from the mouth im-
pelled by a choking cough. The poor fighting
man tosses and turns himself into every position
in search of rehef. But his efforts are unavail-
ing ; he feels that his power of breathing
is faihng ; that asphyxiation is gradually
becoming complete. The slow strangling
of his respiration, of which he is fully conscious,
at last enfeebles his strength. No longer is it
possible for him to expel the profuse cxpcc-
240
VIVE LA FRANCE !
toration ; the air tubes of his lungs become
distended with it, and with a few gasps lie
dies.
" If the ' gassed " man survives the first stage
of his agony, some sleep may follow the gradual
decline of the urgent symptoms, and after such
sleep he feels refreshed and better. Hut
further trouble is in store for him, for the in-
tense irritation to which the re,-pirai(jry passages
have been exposed by the inhalaticm of the
suffocating gas is quickly followed by the super-
vention of ;;cute broncliitis. In such attacks
death may come, owing to the severity of the
intlamniaiion. In mild cases of 'gassing.' on
the other hand, the rc-ulting bronchitis de-
velops in a modified lorni with the result that
rec(ner\- now generally {< llow.s. 'i'ime, how-
ever, can only show tti ..hat extent permanent
damage to the lungs is inflicted. Possibly
chr(jnic bronchitis ma}- be the lot of such
' gassed ' men in after life or some pulmonary
trouble equally disturbing. It is difficult to
believe that they can wholly escape some evil
effects."
As soon as it was found that the immediate
cause of death in the fatal gas cases was acute
THF RED BADGE OF MERCY 241
ccngcstion )f the lungs, the surgeons were able
to treat it u on special and definite lines.
Means were devised for c nsuring the expulsion
of the excessive secretion from the lungs, thus
affording much relief and making it possible
to avert asphyxiation. In some apparently-
hopeless cases the lives of the men were saved
bv artificial respiration. The inhalation of
oxygen was also tried with favourable results,
and in cases where the restlessness of the
patient was more mental than physical, opium
was successfully used. So that even the poison-
gas, perhaps the most dreadful death-dcahng
device which the war has produced, neither
dismayed nor defeated the men whose task it
is to save hfe instead of to take it.
To the surgeons and nurses at the front the
people of France and England owe a debt of
gratitude which they can never wholly repay.
The soldiers in the trenches are waging no
more desperate or heroic battle than these
quiet, efficient, energetic men and women wb'>
wear the red badge of mercy. Their courage
is shown by the enormous losses they have
sufiFered under fi^e, the proportion of miHtary
doctors and hospital attendants killed, wounded,
242
VI\K LA i-RANCK !
or taken prisoner, equalling the proportion
of infantry losses. They have no sleep sa
such as tliey can snatch between the tides
of wounded or when they drop on the floor
from sheer exhaustion. They are working
under as trying conditions as doctors and nurses
were ever called upon to face. They treat
daily hundreds of cases, any one of which
would cause a !, uii physician to call a con-
sultation. They arc in constant peril from
marauding Taulv?. lor the German air-
men S(.-.-m to take delight in choosing build-
ings Hying the Red Cross flag as targets for
their bombs. In their ears, both dav and
night, sounds the din of near-bv battle. Their
organization is a marvel of efficienc}'. 'I'hat
of the Germans may be a> good but it can be
no better.
In order that I m.ay bring home to you in
hngland ai.o America the realities of this thine
called war, I want to tell you what I saw one
day in a little town called Bailleul. Bailleul is
only two or three miles on the French side of
the Franco-Belgian frontier, and it is so close to
the firing-line that its windows continually
rattle. The noise along that portion of the
THE RED BAPGE OE MERCY 243
battle-front never ceases. It sounds for all the
world like the clatter of a gigantic harvester.
And that is precisely what it is— the harvester
of death.
As we entered Bailleul they were bringing
in the harvest. They were bringing it in motor-
cars, many, many, many of them, stretching
in endless procession down the yellow roads
which lead to Lille and Neuvc Chapelle and
Poperinghe and Ypres. Over the grey bodies
of the motor-cars were grey canvas hoods, and
painted on the hoods were staring scarlet
crosses. The curtain at the- back of each car
was rolled up, and protruding from the dim
interior were four pairs of feet. Sometimes
those feet were wrapped in bandages, and on
the fresh white hnen were bright-red splotches,
but more often they were encased in worn and
muddied boots. I shall never forget those poor,
b'-oken. mud-encrusted boots, for they spoke
so eloquently of utter weariness and pain.
There was something about them that was
the very essence of pathos. The owners of
those boots were lying on stretchers which were
made to slide into the ambulances as drawers
slide into a bureau, and most of them were
■:1-
-A,»-
'k[^'7'.
.E;.,,.,.
i
l?p:-
244
\ I\ K LA FRANCE !
suffering agony such as only a woman in diild-
birth knows.
This was the reaping of the grim harvester
which was at its work of mowing down human
beings not five miles away. Sometimes, as
tlie ambulances went rocking by, I would catch
a fleeting glimpse of some poor fellow whose
wounds would not permit of his lying down.
I remember one of these in particular — a clean-
cut, fair-haired youngster who looked .is if lie
~\ ere still in his teens. He was sitting on the floor
of the ambulance leaning for support against
the rail, lie held his arms straight out in front
of him. Both his hands had been blown away
at the wrists. The head of another was so
swathed in bandages that my first impression
was that he was wearing a huge red-and-white
turban. The jolting of the car had caused the
bandages to slip. If that man lives little
children will run from hin^ in terror, and women
will turn aside when ihey meet him in the
street. And still that caravan of agony kept
rolling by, roHing by. The floors of the cars
were sieves leaking blood. The dusty road over
which they had passed no longer needed
sprinkling.
H^-^^^^S
f, . T»i-j:i»'Wr< ."O'P* T >«
THE ki:i) BADGR OF MKKCV 245
Tearing over the r(;ugh cobbles of Hailleul,
the ambulances canie lo a halt before some
one of the many doorways over which dr. lop
tlic Red Cross Hags, for every suitable build-
ing in the httle town has been converted into
a hospital. The one of which I am going to
tell you had been a school until the war began.
It is othcially known as Clearing Hospital
Number Eight, but I shall always think of it
as hell's antechamber. In the afternoon that
I was there eight hundred wounded were
brought into the building between the hours
of two and four, and this, mind you, was but
one of many hospitals in the same little town.
As I entered the door I had to stand aside to
let a stretcher carried by two orderlies pass
out. Through the rough brown blanket which
covered the stretcher showed the vague out-
lines of a human form, but the face was covered,
and it was very still. A week or two weeks or a
month later, when the casualty Hsts were
pubhshed, there appeared the name of the still
form under the brown blanket, and there was
anguish in some English home. In the hall
of the hospital a man was sitting upright
on a bench, and two surgeons were working
24'^'
\I\I. LA FRANCE!
over him. He was silting there because the
operating-rooms were filled. I hope that that
man is unmarried, for he no longer has a face.
What a few hours before had been the honest
countenance of an English lad was now a horrid
welter of blood and splintered bone and
mangled flesh.
The surgeon in charge took me upstairs to
the ward which contained the more serious
cases. On a cot beside the door was stretched
a young Canadian. His face looked as though
a giant in spiked shoes had stepped upon it.
" Eook," said the surgeon, and lifted the
woollen blanket. That man's body was like
a field which has been gone over with a disk
harrow. His feet, his legs, his abdomen, his
chest, his arms, his face wen- furrowed with
gaping, angry wounds. " He was shot through
the hand," explained the surgeon. " He made
his way back to the dressing-station in the
reserve trenches, but just as he reached it a
shell exploded at his feet." I patted him on
the shoulder and told him that I too knew
the land of the great forests and the rolling
prairies, and that before long he was going
back to it. And, though he could not speak.
he turned that ]->o(n, torn face of his and
.smiled at me. He must have been suflFering
the torments of the damned, but he smiled
at me, I tell you — he smilrd at me.
In the next bed, not two feet away— for the
hospitals in Bailleul are very crowded— a
great, brawny fellow from a Highland regiment
was sitting propped against his pillows. He
could not lie down, the surgeon told me,
because he had been shot through the lungs.
He held a tin cup in his hand, and quite
regularly, about once a minute, he would hold
it to his lips and spit out blood. Over by the
window lay a boy with a face as white as the
pillow-cover. He was quite conscious, and
s ared at the cciUng with wide, unseeing eyes.
" Another shrapnel case," remarked a hospital
attendant. " Both legs amputated, but he'll
recover." I wonder what he will do for a living
when he gets back to England. Perhaps he
will sell pencils or boot -laces on the flags of
Piccadilly, and hold out his cap for coppers.
A man with his head all swathed in strips of
linen lay so motionless that I asked if he was
living. " A head wound," was the answer.
" We've tried trepanning, and he'll probably
Mm.U^X .^^.rr:M>:^JkB^SmAM^
24K
\I\K LA IK Wei-;
pull tlirMu^'li. hut lii'll m viT recover liis
FLM^on." C'an'i you sit- him it) ilic years to
totrif. tiii> -pUndid -jxciiDin of m.'.nhood, his
iiiiiul a hlank, wamkriii^', hilplc^s a? a little
tliikl. alnnit ■-nmc li!igli>h villa^- ?
1 doubt if any four walls in all the uorld
contain more human suf^L-ring than those of
Hospital Number Fi^ht at Hailleul, yet of all
those shatterc d, broken, mangled men 1 heard
only one utter a complaint or groan. He was
a fair-haired giant. a'> are so many of these
Knglish fighting men. A bullet had splintered
hi- spine, and witii his hours numbered, he
was suffering the most awful torment that a
human being can endure. The sweat stood in
beads upon his forehead. 'I'he muscles of his
neck and arms were so corded and knotted
that it seemed as though they were about to
burst their way through the sun-tanned skin.
His naked bnast rose and fll in ureat sobs of
aguny. " Oh God ! Oh God ! " he moaned,
*' be merciful and take me — it hurts, it hurts
— it hurts me" so — my wife— the kiddies — for
the love of Christ, doctor, give me an in-
jecii.n and stop the pain — say good-bye to
them for me — tell them — oh, I cant stand it
11 IK Kl.l) HXDGI, OF Ml Kt \ J49
any longer — I'm not afraid to die-, doctor out
I ju^ can't stand thi* pain — <»h God, dear
God. -u.on't you pUnst' Irt me die ? "
When I went out of that room the beads of
sweat wi r standing on my forehead.
They took me downstairs to show mc what
they call the "evacuation ward." It is a big,
barnlikc room, perhaps a hundred feet long
by fifty wide, and the floor was so thickly
covered with blanketed forms (m stretchers
that there was no room to walk about among
them, 'i'hcse were the men whose wounds
had been treated, and wht), it was behcved,
were able to survive the journey by hospital
train to one of the base hospitals on the coast.
It is a very grave case indeed that is permitted
to remain for even a single night in the hospitals
in Bailleul, for Bailleul is but a clearing-
house for the mangled, and its hospitals must
always be ready to receive that unceasing
scarlet stream which, day and night, night and
day, comes pouring in, pouring in, pouring
in.
Those of the wounded in the evacuation
ward who were conscious were for the most
part cheerful — as cheerful, that is, as men can
).m.^K
2>0
VIVE LA FRANCE !
be whose bodies have been ripped and drilled
and torn by shot and shell, who have been
strangled by poisonous gases, who are aflame
with fever, who are faint with loss of blood,
and who have before them a railway journey
of rany hours. This railway journey to the
coast is as comfortable as human ingenuity can
make it, the trains with their white enamelled
interiors and swinging berths being literally
hospitals on wheels, bat to these weakened,
wearied men it is a terribly trying experience,
even though they know that at the end of it
clean beds and cool pillows and soft-footed,
low- voiced nurses await them.
The men awaiting transfer still wore the
clothes in which they had been carried from
the trenches, though in many cases they had
been slashed open so that the surgeons might
get at the wounds. They were plastered with
mud. Many of them had had no opportunity
to bathe for weeks and were crawling with
vermin. Their underclothes were in such a
loathsome condition that when they were re-
moved they fell apart. The canvas stretchers
on which they lay so patiently and uncom-
plainingly were splotched wdth what looked like
il
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 251
wet brown paint, and on this horrid sticky
substance were swarms of hungry flies. The
air was heavy with the mingled smells of anti-
septics, perspiration, and fresh blood. In that
room was to be found every form of wound
which can be inflicted by the most hellish
weapons the brain of man has been able to
devise. The wounded were covered with
coarse woollen blankets, but some of the men
in their torment had kicked their coverings
off, and I saw things which I have no words
to tell about and which I wish with all my
heart that I could forget. There were men
whose lejs had been amputated up to the
thighs ; whose arms had been cut off at the
shoulder ; there were n.en who had lost their
eyesight and all their days must grope in dark-
ness ; and there were other men who had been
ripped open from waist to neck so that they
looked Uke the carcasses that hang in front of
butcher's shops ; while, most horrible of all,
were those who, without a wound on them,
raved and cackled with insane mirth at the
horror of the things they had seen.
We went cut from that place of unfor-
gettable horrors into the sunlight and the
Ill
252
\ IV E LA FRANCE !
clean fresh air again. It was late afternoon,
the birds were singing, a gentle breeze was
whi'^pering in the t/ee-tops ; but from over
there, on the other side of that green and
smiling valley, still came the unceasing clatter
of that grim harvester garnering its crop of
death. On the ground, in the shade of a spread-
ing chestnut-tree, had been laid a stretcher,
and on it was still another of those silent,
bandaged forms. " He is badly wounded,"
said the surgeon, following the direction of
my glance, " fairly shot to pieces. But he
begged us to leave him in the open air. \\ e
arc sending him on by train to Boulogne to-
night, and then by hospital ship to England."
I walked over and looked down at him. He
could not have been more than eighteen —
just such a clean-limbed, open-faced lad as any
girl would have been proud to call sweet-
heart, any mother son. He was lying very
still. About his face there was a pecuhar
greyish pallor, and on his half-parted Hps had
gathered many flies. I beckoned to the doctor.
" He's not going to England," I whispered ;
*' he's going to sleep in France." The surgeon,
after a quick glance, gave an order, and two
THE RED BADGE OE MERCY
^'5
bearers came and lifted the stretcher and,
bore it to a ramshackle outhouse which they
call the mortuary, and gently set it down
at the end of a long row of other silent forms.
As I passed out through the gateway in the
wall which surrounds Hospital Number Eight,
I saw a group of children playing in the street.
" Come on," shrilled one of them, " let's play
soldier ! "
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THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
LONDON b- EDINBURGH
A^^iii: