come on. Behind us the ruined walls of Houthem are hiding in the
thickening dusk, but the grayish steeple where the Germans have--and the
French used to have--their observers, persistently shows itself.
Hauptmann Kliewer and the Bavarian captain have left the road and are
wading through the mud of the farmhouse yard. I thought we were going to
Brigade Headquarters. We splash on after them. Hours before at the
battery we sank in mud to the tops of our puttees; now the novelty has
worn off. Through an open barn door I see a motor and think of it as
being hidden there, an impression which grows, upon noticing that all
the windows in the rear of the house are covered with boards, so that no
light is visible. But the front door is visible. Yes, but that faces
Houthem where the Germans are, and these rear windows face Ypres and the
English and the French. About that silent house broods mystery.
Hauptmann Kliewer is knocking and the door opens just enough for us to
pass in one at a time, and is hurriedly closed. I wonder if a French
observer could have seen that narrow bar of light. Probably not, for in
the room only candles are burning--three stubby candles on a long
kitchen table, around which soldiers are sitting. And something buzzes,
and picking up one of the many telephones, a soldier says into it,
"_Brigade Hauptquartier._" A moment, and it buzzes again. And once more
the monotonous "_Brigade Hauptquartier._" And it dawns upon me that this
dirty farmhouse must be the Brigade Headquarters that they told us we
would visit. The kitchen now has a new interest.
Bidding us wait, Hauptmann Kliewer and the Bavarian captain have gone
with an orderly into another room. The man at the table with the ragged
beard and the boyish face has clamped a telephone to his head and is
writing rapidly, pausing now and then to assure the man at the other end
of the wire that he is getting every word. I wonder where that other man
is? Down in a trench, perhaps, or possibly in the regimental
headquarters. What is he saying? Have the French attacked? The other man
at the table, puffing stolidly at the briar pipe, is clasping a
telephone as though ready should the buzzer call. I wonder how he can be
fresh and clean shaven, when all the other faces seen in the flickering
candle light look weary and unkempt.
"Come!" Hauptmann Kliewer is calling us, so we leave the men around the
kitchen table, who, unlike most of the German soldiers we have met, seem
too exhausted to talk, and file through a latched door into a room that
might have been in a farmhouse somewhere near Monroe, New York. The
little black, pillow-seated chairs, the old-fashioned piano with its
rack of torn music, the red-cushioned stool with the stuffing coming
out, a hideous colored print of Antwerp on the wall, the oil lamp with
the buff china shade, it all seems so utterly un-European. And then the
door to an adjoining room opens and a slender, nervous-looking man in
the fifties, whose impressive shoulder straps indicate an officer of
high rank, begins to bow to us all. "General Major Clauss," Hauptmann
Kliewer is introducing us, and at once the General Major dominates the
room. It is for him to say whether we must go back to Lille, or spend
the night at one of his regimental headquarters.
He begins a long conversation with the Hauptmann. General Major Clauss
is shaking his head. I guess it's back to Lille.
"Ask him," I beg the Hauptmann, as he begins to give us the substance of
what had been said, "if they cannot let us go to the firing line, if
they'll let us stay here until morning."
With a smile, Hauptmann Kliewer is telling the General Major our wishes,
but he too smiles, and spreads out his hands--the right one is
wounded--as though it were out of the question.
The little parlor is filling with officers. They are all bowing and
smiling in a friendly way. I appeal to one of them, a young chap,
handsome in spite of the dueling scar across his chin. "We can do
nothing," he says regretfully, in English. The General Major,
apparently, is reluctant even to ask one of his regimental commanders to
assume the responsibility for us. As if to bid us good-by, the staff is
standing at attention. We urge the Hauptmann to telephone. "I shall
try," he says, with rare good nature. General Major Clauss has closed
the door behind him in his bedroom, and the Hauptmann buttonholes a
Major. The Staff officers look at each other in surprise. They believed
they were well rid of us. Briefly the Hauptmann is making the point for
us. The young officer with the scarred chin puts in a word. The Major
seems undecided. A lieutenant says something that I imagine would
translate into, "Telephone,--anything to be rid of them," but he regards
us with the amazing polite smile.
The Major darts into the kitchen where the telephones are and then,
smiling broadly, Hauptmann Kliewer comes in followed by the Major.
"Permission has been granted," he says, "for you to go to the
headquarters of the Seventeenth Regiment. You will spend the night
there, and be here at seven in the morning, where I shall meet you with
the motor."
"Aren't you coming with us, Captain?" somebody asks.
"I'm going to spend the evening in the headquarters of my own regiment
in Commines," the Hauptmann explains. "One of the officers here will
take you to the Seventeenth's headquarters."
Thanking everybody, we leave the parlor, and the officers smile
sententiously. We pass through the dimly lit kitchen where the tired
soldiers sit around the table, and cautiously opening that betraying
light filled door, we file, one at a time, into the stable yard. It is
still dusk, and as we follow our officer towards the narrow road, that
meets the one we had taken from Houthem, Kliewer bids us good-by. "Be
careful," he calls. His motor drives away, and to my surprise our car
follows. "Call back that driver," I say to our officer, "he's made a
mistake."
"No, he is right," smiles the officer. "No automobile ever goes up this
road. The French would see it. It's an easy walk, only a mile."
We follow him through the mud, finally setting foot on the road, less
muddy I notice, than the road from Houthem. We are on our way to the
headquarters of the Seventeenth Regiment, The dream of every
correspondent in this war is about to be realized. We are on our way to
spend the night on the firing line.
5:30. We have been walking ten minutes. We have passed a mounted patrol
and an unarmed private, walking fast. The long twilight has grayed, but
even far up the road I can still distinguish the posts of the wire
fence. We have just passed a lonely, brown frame cottage, the last house
between the open fields and a fringe of wood, when the Lieutenant stops
short and faces us.
"From now on," says the Lieutenant, with that easy way of authority, "we
shall walk at intervals of thirty paces."
I know what that means. Only a few hours before, when approaching a
battery, Hauptmann Kliewer told us the same thing. I remember his words:
"Altogether we make too plain a mark. We must separate."... How uneasy
you feel, walking along this way. Not only are you gauging your own
interval of thirty paces, but you are careful to keep an eye on the
others, ready to warn them if they draw too close; and they are keeping
an eye on you. You expect something to happen. Uneasy, you watch the
sky, but no shrapnel is bursting nearby. Ahead somewhere the artillery
is booming, but here everything is quiet. This walking along, pacing
your distance, restlessly glancing to right and left, and listening, is
getting on my nerves. No wonder I can't hear anything. The flaps of that
aviator's cap are tight around my ears. Expectantly I unloosen them. And
then I hear it, above us, a sound that makes me stop short; a sound as
though a giant had sucked in his breath.
Above us a shell is screaming on its way to the French trenches. From
beyond the woods the cannonading sounds heavier. Through the trees,
where the road bends to the right, a row of roofless houses seems
ghostly gray in the dusk. "That's what's left of Hollenbeck," I am
saying to Poole; "I heard the Major say we'd pass through it." And then
it seems as though the air is being sucked in all around us; it shrills
to a multitude of strange whistlings. The fence wire rings; a twig
rattles along the dried limbs of a tree and floats down; something spats
against a stone and goes ricocheting away. I'm positive we're going to
be hit; the air is wild with bullets. The trees are closer. There we'll
be safe. Why don't the others hurry, so that we can move faster, too?
And then, right on the road, almost where my heel has just lifted, a
bullet strikes. The dirt flies high. Instinctively I lurch forward and
fall on one knee. Forgetting his blanket, Poole bends over me. "Did you
get it?" he asks. I wonder if I didn't, and look at my foot. "It was
close," he says, relieved; "I heard the thing hit right behind you."
"I don't think we're seen," I unconcernedly try to say. "They wouldn't
have let us come up here if we were. These must be wild bullets flying
above the trenches. They're just beyond the wood, you know."
"Too wild," is Poole's comment, with which I agree. We are climbing a
slight hill now, the road turning to the right into Hollenbeck, a silent
place of unroofed, shell-battered houses. Here you feel safe for the
walls protect you, but over our head the loud whining of the German
shells keeps up the sound of war. Passing the last house we come upon
two squads of soldiers waiting in its shelter, and as we go on out into
the open road, they grin. The dusk is turning to black, and ahead it is
hard to tell where the tops of that clump of trees leave off, and the
sky begins. I am certain that those trees are our destination, and
although the bullets are whistling again, one feels safe.
A few minutes' walking and we have turned into what seems to be a wooded
lawn. A hundred feet away the vague shape of a low roofed house marks
itself by a thin bar of light, evidently from a closed door. The lawn is
muddy, and as, walking in single file, we cross on planks, the liquid
ground sloshes beneath our feet. As we approach what seems to be the
stable of a farm, those in front walk slower, and even slower descend
into the earth. Poole and I follow them down a flight of rough stone
steps, and seeing two uprights of stout logs standing as a doorway and,
level with my head as I descend, a roof of tree trunks and dirt, I
whisper, "Bombproof."
The opening of what seems to be an old kitchen door. A warning to keep
your head down, and we go stooping into a room dug in the ground, at the
other end of which a genial, gray-haired man, whom you instantly decide
is Colonel Meyer of the Seventeenth Infantry, is rising from beside a
homemade table spread with military maps, a hospitable smile on his
ruddy face.
"Welcome," he is saying in German. "So you got up the road all right?"
A sudden suspicion possesses me, and after introductions are over, I
ask: "Colonel, there were too many bullets on that road. Where did they
come from? Wild?"
"Wild?" he chuckled. "Why, sir, that road is our line of communication.
It is watched and is covered by French sharpshooters. We lose half a
dozen men on it every day."
And the officers at Brigade Headquarters smiled.
* * * * *
5:57 P. M. The broad wooden benches against the walls seem to us as
comfortable as a cushioned lounge, and repeating, with many a "_glaube
mir_"--which the Colonel and his Adjutant are quick to catch on to as
the "believe me" of American slang--that wild horses couldn't drag us
out on that road again, we take in the details of the room. It is about
ten feet from where I sit to the strip of burlap covering the earthen
wall behind the opposite bench. I should say that from the shelf, where
the Colonel has his personal belongings, down to the other end of the
room, which the glow from our big oil table lamp only lights faintly, is
about twenty-five feet, enough for men to sleep on the benches along
either wall. In the middle squats a red bellied stove, its pipe going up
through the roof. The door looks as if it came from a farmhouse kitchen;
it is paneled with four little squares of glass, one of them cracked,
probably from the concussion of a bursting shell.
Yes, the timbers overhead look strong, intensely safe unless a _grenat_
should burst squarely on top of them. And only by one chance in a
thousand could a shrapnel ball fly down through the door. Yes, it seems
safe in here; slowly we began to forget about the road. The Colonel
excuses himself to study a map that seems to have been done by a
stencil, and I cannot help but notice that it has been executed to the
most minute detail, even individual trees and bushes being marked. I
wonder what the scale is. I have to compel myself to glance elsewhere,
for the fascination of the map is strong.
Above the shelf that runs across the end of the room, just so high that
the Colonel who is sitting beside me, can reach up and take from it what
he wants, stands a large square mirror. It seems also to be doing
service as a visiting card tray, for stuck in the frame are five or six
cards bearing the names of officers and their regiments. Somebody is
taking good care of the Colonel--I imagine he's married--for the shelf
is filled with luxuries, boxes of cigars and cigarettes, bottles of
liquor, and there's a quart of sparkling Moselle! Strewn in a long row
are all varieties of those wonderful food pastes that Germany began to
put up so extensively in tubes, since the war--Strassburg gooselivers,
anchovies, rum chocolate. Colonel, you're living well down here!
It's queer how you can, in a few minutes, learn the tastes and habits of
a man in a place like this. The Colonel is religious. There is a
crucifix fastened to the burlap over my head. The Colonel must sleep on
this bench. At the ends of his shelf, I see two other crucifixes, and
there, standing on the top of a box of cigars, is a colored print, a
Station of the Cross. I begin to know the Colonel better than if I had
observed him for months in his Bavarian home. As I gaze at him now,
bending over the map, that in his preoccupation he has pushed farther
across the table, the lamp's yellow glow shows me his face in relief
against the shadowed walls. It is a strong face, and kind; the chin is
grim and square, but the eyes are big and gentle, grayish though, the
color of a fighter. The gray mustache almost hides it, but reveals
enough of the full mouth of one who is not ascetic. As for the
crucifixes and the picture; they belong to the eyes. A seasoned man, the
Colonel.
With a nervous start, that seems incongruous with his broad shoulders,
the Colonel looks up. Then, appearing suddenly to remember something, he
pushes the map towards me. I see it is a map of his position.
"There," he says, running his finger the length of a broken line in the
upper right hand corner, "are the French trenches." "There," and he
points to lines paralleling them, "is our position. Here," and his
finger travels down the map, to rest on a group of oblongs and squares,
"is where we are now. This _unterstand_," and he makes a mark beside the
smallest square, "was dug next to the shed where the farmer kept his
wagons. This place is known as...." Were I to name this place, it would,
upon publication, be cabled to France, and telephoned out to the French
artillery positions. "Now," and the Colonel smiles and runs his finger
along a thick blue line that makes an angle and then disappears at the
lower end of the map, "that is the road by which you came from Houthem,
and at this point you were fired upon. Notice the curve that the French
trenches make. From the extremity of that trench," and the Colonel
indicates an imaginary line sweeping a section of the road, "it is not a
thousand meters, easy for a sharpshooter."
"And that," I laugh, and I'm trying to make this gaiety real, "is the
point that we don't care about crossing when we return."
"Can we not go back by some other road," Poole suggests, "a longer way,
making a detour?"
The Colonel shakes his head with a reluctant smile.
I hear then the same buzzing that I heard in the kitchen at Brigade
headquarters. And from the top of a varnished box, on the floor where I
had not seen it, the Adjutant picks up a telephone. "_Hier ist Siebzehn
Bayrischer Regiment_," he calls, and hands the instrument across the
table to the Colonel. "_Hier ist Oberst Meyer_," says the Colonel, "_Ja
... Jawohl ... Adieu_." With a chuckle, he turns to us. "That was
Hauptmann Kliewer," he explains, "telephoning from Houthem. Somebody
must have told him there about the road. He was rather concerned for
you, but I assured him that you were about to take dinner."
Feebly we try to protest. But the Colonel insists that we'll have to eat
with him, and we all feel guilty and self-conscious. It's just like
these Germans to share their black bread and army wurst with us. But
this is the firing line; this bombproof is only eight hundred meters
from the French trenches, and every scrap of food must count. An
electric torch flashes on the wall outside the door; some one is coming
down. A black mustached, young Bavarian comes in, and picking up the
varnished box, which I now see sprouts with vine-like wires that climb
up the wall and out under the roof, he carries the telephone away. The
door opens again and another private comes in. Clicking his heels in a
salute, he bows low from the waist, and then announces dinner. In
bewilderment we look at each other and follow the Colonel up the earthen
stairs.
"I always dine," Colonel Meyer seems to be apologizing, "in the
farmhouse."
Overhead a stray bullet whistles, and I hear it rattling through the
dried tops of the trees.
* * * * *
7:05 P. M. It seems safe, until leaving the shelter of the bar, we see
that we have to cross an open space before reaching the farmhouse. I can
see, standing outside the door there, the vague form of a soldier. He
passes the shaded window, a faint orange square in the shadowy wall, and
his bayonet flashes. As we cross this open space the Adjutant is asking
us to turn off our electric lamps, for their reflection might attract
French observers. So we trust to luck in the darkness and, slipping in
mud, dart behind the shelter of the farmhouse. I hear a bullet thudding
against the stone wall of the barn.
The door creaks open and we go in. As I gape around, the fragrance of
good cooking comes from a coal stove, crammed with tall cylindrical army
pots. The room is evidently the kitchen--a typical farmhouse kitchen
with a wide fireplace of red bricks and a long mixing table along the
wall by the shade-drawn window. Tacked to a slate-colored pantry door is
a calendar with the month of October not yet torn off, and on top of the
fireplace an old wooden clock that has run down at half past four--was
it on the day the Germans came? "Sit down, gentlemen," the Colonel is
saying, indicating a round kitchen table, around which six chairs are
crowded. On a snow white cloth our places have been set. There are not
enough forks to go round so some have soup spoons. I see only three
knives, so some of us will have to use our pocket knives. A comfortable
yellow light falls from the yellow lamp in the center of the table. We
begin to feel as snug as a fireside cat. "Our knives and forks are
rather limited," apologizes the Adjutant, who introduces himself as
Hauptmann Koller, a tall handsome Bavarian with a scraggy black growth
on his chin. "However, there are dishes enough to go around." I begin to
have a suspicion that our sympathy has been absurd. Black bread and army
wurst never gave out the odors that are coming from those pots on the
stoves, and then our surprise is complete when the Colonel offers us a
cocktail. Cocktails, and the French trenches eight hundred meters away!
"A German cocktail," smiles the Colonel, as he pours out the white
_schnapps_, "not like the kind you have in America. One of my friends
had a bottle of them in München--Bronx cocktails," and the Colonel makes
a grimace. There are only two cordial glasses, but by passing them
around, we succeed in drinking the Colonel's health. As we take our
seats at the table I notice that while four of the chairs seem to belong
to the kitchen, the other two are richly tapestried. There must be a
château near here. The Colonel is sitting in one of them and Dunn in the
other. Leave it to Dunn to be lounging in the other tapestried chair.
Hauptmann Koller, who is opposite, is hacking off chunks of bread from a
round rye loaf. On my other side Reed is looking at the bottle of
_schnapps_ and wearing his unextinguishable smile.
A soldier brings a pot from the stove and the Colonel serves us. It is
an oxtail stew, canned of course, but smells appetizing. "The Colonel
hasn't any left for himself," exclaims Poole; but the Colonel is holding
up his hand. "There is plenty," he says, and the soldier brings another
steaming pot. Magically, tall, dark liter bottles make their appearance
and on the labels I see "_Hacker-Brau_."
"Münchener Beer," cries Reed. "Isn't this amazing?" The Colonel looks at
Hauptmann Koller and grins. I think that from their viewpoint they are
enjoying it as much as we. Canned boiled beef follows the stew; more of
the tall, dark bottles appear. I see a soldier open a green door in the
wall at my left and, reaching into what is evidently another room,
straighten up with his arms full of beer bottles. "That is our
Bierkeller in there," explains Koller. Dunn decides that it is the very
place for him to sleep.
"Colonel," says Poole, pointing at the wall behind me, "what did you do,
have those windows boarded up so that the light wouldn't be seen?"
Hauptmann Koller is laughing and rubbing his frowsy chin in delight.
"Those are not windows," the Colonel says, with a laugh. "They are shell
holes." We press Koller to give us the story: "The Colonel was dictating
a report in here one morning. That orderly was writing it," and Koller
nods towards the smiling, good-looking private with the Iron Cross, who
is writing at the mixing table. "Without warning, for our battery was
not in action and there was nothing to draw the French fire, two
shrapnels tore through the wall and burst in the room. You can see the
holes their balls made in the other walls and the floor--and the Colonel
wasn't hit!"
With a wave of his hand the Colonel indicates the last of three cots
against the wall. "I was sitting on the edge of that bed," he says, "and
the shells passed over the other two beds."
Almost incredulously we gaze at him as if to make sure that he is
wounded but doesn't know it.
I am staring now at the walls and ceiling, trying to count the little
shrapnel holes. Above the Colonel's head there is an Empire mirror that
never hung in any farmhouse, and perched upon it a brass-black,
hair-plumed helmet of a French Cuirassier.
"Out in the yard," remarks the Colonel, "there is an unexploded shell,
one of the French 'twenty-eights.' It fell there one day and didn't
burst. We had one of our ordnance experts up to examine it, but he says
it won't explode now. If it did, it would blow up the house."
So we sit here thinking of the silent guest in the yard outside. I
forget that there is something more to eat. With the cheese and coffee,
the evening concert begins. A German field piece in the woods close by
has opened fire. Suddenly the night is roaring with the bursting of
shells, and down in the trenches the rifles begin their incessant harsh
croaking. The Colonel is looking at the tiny watch dial on his wrist.
"The same as last night," he remarks to Hauptmann Koller, adding to us,
"The French always open heavy fire at eight."
That's the third German officer I've heard make that statement in as
many days. The French always shelled Mouchy at three; they put
_grenaten_ in Houthem every evening at six; they concentrated their fire
here at eight. Frenchmen, the last people in the world you would suspect
of systemization!
"They'll keep it up," continues the Colonel, "until two, and then
they'll stop and begin again at five for two hours. We know exactly what
to expect from them. They're hammering on us, for we hold the furthest
front on this part of the line. I dare not advance any further until my
supports come up."
We ask him to tell us something about the fighting here.