WAR has become so much a part of the life of the French peasants
that they have little fear under fire. Frenchmen over military age
and Frenchwomen pursue their ordinary avocations with little concern
for exploding shells. To be sure, it is something of a nuisance, but
children play while their mothers work at the tub washing soldier
clothing. And as the Allied armies advance, wresting a mile or two of
territory from the enemy at each stroke, the peasant follows with his
plow less than a mile behind the lines. War has become a part of their
lives. Newman Flower, of _Cassell’s Magazine_, has been “Out There,”
and he thus records some of his impressions in the trail of the war:
The war under the earth is a most extraordinary thing. In the main, the
army you see in the war zone is not a combatant army. It is the army of
supply. The real fighters you seldom set eyes on unless you go and look
for them. And, generally speaking, the ghastliness of war is carried on
beneath the earth’s level.
Given time, the _Boche_ will take a lot of beating as an earth delver.
At one spot on the Somme I went into a veritable underground town,
where, till the British deluge overtook them, three thousand of the
toughest Huns the Kaiser had put into his line lived and thrived. They
had sets of compartments there, these men, with drawing-rooms complete,
even to the piano, kitchen, bathroom, and electric light, and I was
told that there was one place where you could have your photograph
taken, or buy a pair of socks! Every visitor down the steps—except the
British—was required to turn a handle three times, which pumped air
into the lower regions. If you descended without pumping down your
portion of fresh air you were guilty of bad manners.
Anything more secure has not been invented since Adam. But this
impregnable city fell last year, as all things must fall before the
steady pressing back of British infantry.
The writer tells of discovering in an old French town that was then
under fire a shell-torn building on which were displayed two signs
reading “First Aid Post” and “Barber Shop.” He says:
When I dived inside I saw one man having his arm dressed, for he had
been hit by a piece of shell in the square, and in a chair a few yards
away a Tommy having a shave. Coming in as a stranger, I was informed
that if I didn’t want a haircut or a shave, or hadn’t a healthy wound
to dress, this was not the Empire music hall, so I had better “hop it.”
It was in “hopping it” that I got astride an unseen fiber of British
communication. I went into the adjoining ruins of a big building. A
single solitary statue stood aloof in a devastation of tumbled brick
and stone. Then, as I was stepping from one mound of rubble to another,
as one steps from rock to rock on the seashore, I heard voices beneath
me. The wreckage was so complete, so unspeakably complete, that human
voices directly under my feet seemed at first startling and indefinite.
Moreover, to add to my confusion, I heard the baa-ing of sheep,
likewise under the earth. But I could see no hole, no outlet.
With the average curiosity of the Britisher I searched around till I
discovered a small hole, a foot in diameter, maybe, and a Tommy’s face
framed in it laughing up at me.
“Hello!” he said.