KING GEORGE and Queen Mary have been seeing war at close range.
Together they made an eleven days’ visit to the British troops in
France, and while there the King experienced the sensation of being
under fire. While the Queen devoted herself to the hospitals and the
sick and wounded, the King was shown all the latest devices for killing
and maiming the enemy. It was soon after seeing what would happen to
the Teutons that he decided to drop his Teutonic name and become Mr.
Windsor. Says a dispatch from the British headquarters in the New York
_Sun_:
On the first morning after his arrival in France, King George visited
the Messines Ridge sector of the front, climbing the ridge while the
Germans were shelling the woods just to his left. He inspected the
ground over which the Irish troops, men from the north and the south,
fought so gallantly side by side during the taking of the Messines
Ridge, and where Major William Redmond fell. While the King was doing
this the Germans began shelling places on the ridge which he had left
but half an hour before. The King visited also Vimy Ridge, from which
he could see the German lines about Lens, with British shells breaking
on them.
For the benefit of the King a special show was staged that he might
witness “that black art of frightfulness which has steadily increased
the horrors of war since the day when the enemy let loose clouds of
poisoned gas upon the soldiers and civilians in Ypres,” says Philip
Gibbs in the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_:
As soon as the King arrived on the field there was a sound of rushing
air, and there shot forth a blast of red flame out of black smoke to
a great distance and with a most terrifying effect. It came from an
improved variety of flame projector. Then the King saw the projection
of burning oil, burst out in great waves of liquid fire. A battalion
of men would be charred like burned sticks if this touched them for
a second. There was another hissing noise, and there rolled very
sluggishly over the field a thick, oily vapor, almost invisible as it
mixed with the air, and carrying instant death to any man who should
take a gulp of it. To such a thing have all of us come in this war for
civilization.
The most spectacular show here was the most harmless to human life,
being a new form of smoke barrage to conceal the movement of troops on
the battlefield.
From this laboratory of the black art the King went to one of those
fields where the machinery of war is beautiful, rising above the
ugly things of this poor earth with light and grace, for this was an
air-drome. As he came up, three fighting planes of the fastest British
type went up in chase of an imaginary enemy. They arose at an amazing
speed and shot across the sky-line like shadows racing from the sun.
When they came back those three boys up there seemed to go a little
mad and played tricks in the air with a kind of joyous carelessness
of death. They tumbled over and over, came hurtling down in visible
corkscrews, looped the loop very close to the earth, flattened out
after headlong dives, and rose again like swallows. The King was
interested in the ages of these pilots and laughed when they confessed
their youth, for one was nineteen and another twenty.
The antics of the “tanks” furnished the King with a great deal of
amusement. Leaving the air-drome, he was driven to a sunken field, very
smooth and long, between two high wooded banks. Says Mr. Gibbs:
Here there was a great surprise and a great sensation, for just as the
King stepped out of his car a young tree in full foliage on the left
of the field up a high bank toppled forward slowly and then fell with
a crash into the undergrowth. Something was moving in the undergrowth,
something monstrous. It came heaving and tearing its way through the
bushes, snapping off low branches and smashing young saplings like an
elephant on stampede. Then it came into sight on top of the bank, a big
gray beast, with a blunt snout, nosing its way forward and all tangled
in green leaves and twigs. It was old brother tank doing his stunt
before the King.
From the far end of a long, smooth field came two other twin beasts
of this ilk, crawling forward in a hurry as though hungry for human
blood. In front of their track, at the other end of the field, were
two breastworks built of sand-bags covering some timbered dugouts and
protected from sudden attack by two belts of barbed wire. The two tanks
came along like hippopotamuses on a spree, one of them waiting for
the other when he lagged a little behind. They hesitated for a moment
before the breastworks as if disliking the effort of climbing them,
then heaved themselves up, thrust out their snouts, got their hind
quarters on the move, and waddled to the top. Under their vast weight
the sand-bags flattened out, the timber beneath slipped and cracked,
and the whole structure began to collapse, and the twins plunged down
on the other side and advanced to attack the barbed wire.
Another tank now came into action from the far end of the field,
bearing the legend on its breast of “_Faugh-a-ballagh_,” which, I am
told, is Irish for “get out of the way.” It was the Derby winner of the
tanks’ fleet. From its steel flanks guns waggled to and fro, and no
dragon of old renown looked half so menacing as this. St. George would
have had no chance against it. But King George, whose servant it was,
was not afraid, and with the Prince of Wales he went through the steel
trap-door into the body of the beast. For some time we lost sight of
the King and Prince, but after a while they came out laughing, having
traveled around the field for ten minutes in the queerest car on earth.
The great thrill of the day came later. Through the woods of a high
bank on the left came a tank, looking rather worse for wear, as though
battered in battle.
It came forward through the undergrowth and made for the edge of
the bank, where there was a machine gun emplacement in a bomb-proof
shelter, whose steep bank was almost perpendicular. It seemed
impossible that any old tank should entertain a notion of taking that
jump, but this tank came steadily on until its snout was well over
the bank and steadily on again with that extraordinary method of
progression in which the whole body of the beast moves from the nose
end upward until it seems to have a giraffe’s neck and very little
else. That very little else was sitting on the top of the emplacement
while the forward part of the tank was poised in space regarding the
setting sun. However, without any hesitation, the whole mass moved on,
lurched out, and nose-dived.
Good Lord! it was then that the thrill came. The tank plunged down like
a chunk of cliff as it fell, went sideways and lost its balance, and,
as near as anything could be, almost turned turtle. It righted itself
with a great jerk at the nick of time just before it took the earth
below and shaved by a hair’s breadth an ammunition dump at the bottom
of the drop.
It was the finest tank trick I ever saw, and it was greeted with
laughter and cheers. The King, however, and other spectators were
rather worried about the lads inside. They must have taken a mighty
toss. No sound came from the inside of the tank, and for a moment some
of us had a vision of a number of plucky fellows laid out unconscious
within those steel walls. The door opened and we could see their feet
standing straight, which was a relief.
“Let them all come out,” said the King, laughing heartily. And out they
all tumbled, a row of young fellows as merry and bright as air pilots
after a good landing.