disembark. England was sending to Sir Douglas Haig men and material, but
not an army in the modern sense. He had to weld the consignments into a
whole there in the field in face of the enemy. Munitions were a matter
of resource and manufacturing, but the great factory of all was the
factory of men. It was not enough that the gunners should know how to
shoot fairly accurately back in England, or Canada, or Australia. They
must learn to coöperate with scores of batteries of different calibers
in curtains of fire and, in turn, with the infantry, whose attacks they
must support with the finesse of scientific calculation plus the
instinctive _liaison_ which comes only with experience under trained
officers, against the German Army which had no lack of material in its
conscript ranks for promotion to fill vacancies in the officers' lists.
From seventeen miles of front to twenty-seven, and then to sixty and
finally to nearly one hundred, the British had broadened their
responsibility, which meant only practice in the defensive, while the
Germans had had two years' practice in the offensive. The two British
offensives at Neuve Chapelle had included a small proportion of the
battalions which were to fight on the Somme; and the third, incomparably
more ambitious, faced heavier concentration of troops and guns than its
predecessors.
What had not been gained in battle practice must be approximated in
drill. Every battalion commander, every staff officer and every general
who had had any experience, must be instructor as well as director. They
must assemble their machine and tune it up before they put it on a
stiffer road than had been tried before.
The British Army zone in France became a school ground for the Grand
Offensive; and while the people at home were thinking, "We've sent you
the men and the guns--now for action!" the time of preparation was
altogether too short for the industrious learners. Every possible kind
of curriculum which would simulate actual conditions of attack had been
devised. In moving about the rear the rattle of a machine gun ten miles
back of the line told of the machine gun school; a series of explosions
drew attention to bombers working their way through practice trenches in
a field; a heavier explosion was from the academy for trench mortars; a
mighty cloud of smoke and earth rising two or three hundred feet was a
new experiment in mining. Sir Douglas went on the theory that no soldier
can know his work too well. He meant to allow no man in his command to
grow dull from idleness.
Trench warfare had become systematized, and inevitably the holding of
the same line for month after month was not favorable to the development
of initiative. A man used to a sedentary life is not given to physical
action. One who is always digging dugouts is loath to leave the
habitation which has cost him much labor in order to live in the open.
Battalions were in position for a given number of days, varying with the
character of the position held, when they were relieved for a rest in
billets. While in occupation they endured an amount of shell fire
varying immensely between different sectors. A few men were on the watch
with rifles and machine guns for any demonstration by the enemy, while
the rest were idle when not digging. They sent out patrols at night into
No Man's Land for information; exchanged rifle grenades, mortars and
bombs with the enemy. Each week brought its toll of casualties, light in
the tranquil places, heavy in the wickedly hot corner of the Ypres
salient, where attacks and counter-attacks never ceased and the
apprehension of having your parapet smashed in by an artillery
"preparation," which might be the forerunner of an attack, was
unremittingly on the nerves.
It was a commonplace that any time you desired you could take a front of
a thousand or two yards simply by concentrating your gunfire, cutting
the enemy's barbed wire and tearing the sandbags of his parapet into
ribbons, with resulting fearful casualties to him; and then a swift
charge under cover of the artillery hurricane would gain possession of
the débris, the enemy's wounded and those still alive in his dugouts.
Losses in operations of this kind usually were much lighter in taking
the enemy's position than in the attempt to hold it, as he, in answer to
your offensive, turned the full force of his guns upon his former trench
which your men were trying to organize into one of their own. Later,
under cover of his own guns, his charge recovered the ruins, forcing the
party of the first part who had started the "show" back to his own
former first line trench, which left the situation as it was before with
both sides a loser of lives without gaining any ground and with the
prospect of drudgery in building anew their traverses and burrows and
filling new sandbags.
It was the repetition of this sort of "incident," as reported in the
daily _communiqués_, which led the outside world to wonder at the
fatuousness and the satire of the thing, without understanding that its
object was entirely for the purpose of _morale_. An attack was made to
keep the men up to the mark; a counter-attack in order not to allow the
enemy ever to develop a sense of superiority. Every soldier who
participated in a charge learned something in method and gained
something in the quality considered requisite by his commanders. He had
met face to face in mortal hand-to-hand combat in the trench traverses
the enemy who had been some invisible force behind a gray line of
parapet sniping at him every time he showed his head.
Attack and counter-attack without adding another square yard to the
territory in your possession--these had cost hundreds of thousands of
casualties on the Western front. The next step was to obtain the
_morale_ of attack without wasting lives in trying to hold new ground.
Credit for the trench raid, which was developed through the winter of
1915, belongs to the Canadian. His plan was as simple as that of the
American Indian who rushed a white settlement and fled after he was
through scalping; or the cowboys who shot up a town; or the Mexican
insurgents who descend upon a village for a brief visit of killing and
looting. The Canadian proposed to enter the German trenches by surprise,
remain long enough to make the most of the resulting confusion, and then
to return to his own trenches without trying to hold and organize the
enemy's position and thus draw upon his head while busy with the spade a
murderous volume of shell fire.
The first raids were in small parties over a narrow front and the
tactics those of the frontiersman, who never wants in individual
initiative and groundcraft. Behind their lines the Canadians rehearsed
in careful detail again and again till each man was letter perfect in
the part that he was to play in the "little surprise being planned in
Canada for Brother Boche." The time chosen for the exploit was a dark,
stormy night, when the drumbeat of rain and the wind blowing in their
direction would muffle the movements of the men as they cut paths
through the barbed wires for their panther-like rush. It was the kind of
experiment whose success depends upon every single participant keeping
silence and performing the task set for him with fastidious exactitude.
The Germans, confident in the integrity of their barbed wire, with all
except the sentries whose ears and eyes failed to detect danger asleep
in their dugouts, found that the men of the Maple Leaf had sprung over
the parapet and were at the door demanding surrender. It was an affair
to rejoice the heart of Israel Putnam or Colonel Mosby, and its success
was a new contribution in tactics to stalemate warfare which seemed to
have exhausted every possible invention and novelty. Trench raids were
made over broader and broader fronts until they became considerable
operations, where the wire was cut by artillery which gave the same kind
of support to the men that it was to give later on in the Grand
Offensive.
There was a new terror to trench holding and dwelling. Now the man who
lay down in a dugout for the night was not only in danger of being blown
heavenward by a mine, or buried by the explosion of a heavy shell, or
compelled to spring up in answer to the ring of the gong which announced
a gas attack, but he might be awakened at two a.m. (a favorite hour for
raids) by the outcry of sentries who had been overpowered by the
stealthy rush of shadowy figures in the night, and while he got to his
feet be killed by the burst of a bomb thrown by men whom he supposed
were also fast asleep in their own quarters two or three hundred yards
away.
Trench-raid rivalry between battalions, which commanders liked to
instil, inevitably developed. Battalions grew as proud of their trench
raids as battleships of their target practice. A battalion which had not
had a successful trench raid had something to explain. What pride for
the Bantams--the little fellows below regulation height who had enlisted
in a division of their own on Lord Kitchener's suggestion--when in one
of their trench raids they brought back some hulking, big Germans and a
man's size German machine gun across No Man's Land!
Raiders never attempted to remain long in the enemy's trenches. They
killed the obdurate Germans, took others prisoners and, aside from the
damage that they did, always returned with identifications of the
battalions which occupied the position, while the prisoners brought in
yielded valuable information.
The German, more adaptive than creative, more organizing than
pioneering, was not above learning from the British, and soon they, too,
were undertaking surprise parties in the night. Although they tightened
the discipline for the defensive of both sides, trench raids were of far
more service to the British than to the Germans; for the British staff
found in them an invaluable method of preparation for the offensive. Not
only had the artillery practice in supporting actual rather than
theoretical attacks, but when the men went over the parapet it was in
face of the enemy, who might turn on his machine guns if not silenced by
accurate gunfire. They learned how to coördinate their efforts, whether
individually or as units, both in the charge and in cleaning out the
German dugouts. Their sense of observation, adaptability and team play
was quickened in the life-and-death contact with the foe.
Through the spring months the trench raids continued in their process
of "blooding" the new army for the "big push." Meanwhile, the
correspondents, who were there to report the operations of the army,
were having as quiet a time as a country gentleman on his estate without
any of the cares of his superintendent.
Our homing place from our peregrinations about the army was not too far
away from headquarters town to be in touch with it or too near to feel
the awe of proximity to the directing authority of hundreds of thousands
of men. Trench raids had lost their novelty for the public which the
correspondents served. A description of a visit to a trench was as
commonplace to readers as the experience itself to one of our seasoned
group of six men. We had seen all the schools of war and the
Conscientious Objectors' battalion, too--those extreme pacifists who
refuse to kill their fellow man. Their opinions being respected by
English freedom and individualism, they were set to repairing roads and
like tasks.
The war had become completely static. Unless some new way of killing
developed, even the English public did not care to read about its own
army. When my English comrades saw that a petty scandal received more
space in the London papers than their accounts of a gallant air raid,
they had moments of cynical depression.
Between journeys we took long walks, went birds'-nesting and chatted
with the peasants. What had we to do with war? Yet we never went afield
to trench or headquarters, to hospital or gun position, without finding
something new and wonderful to us if not to the public in that vast hive
of military industry.
"But if we ever start the push they'll read every detail," said our
wisest man. "It's the push that is in everybody's mind. The man in the
street is tired of hearing about rehearsals. He wants the curtain to go
up."
Each of us knew that the offensive was coming and where, without ever
speaking of it in our mess or being supposed to know. Nobody was
supposed to know, except a few "brass hats" in headquarters town. One of
the prime requisites of the gold braid which denotes a general or of the
red band around the cap and the red tab on the coat lapel which denote
staff is ability to keep a secret; but long association with an army
makes it a sort of second nature, even with a group of civilians. When
you met a Brass Hat you pretended to believe that the monotony of those
official army reports about shelling a new German redoubt or a violent
artillery duel, or four enemy planes brought down, which read the same
on Friday as on Thursday, was to continue forever. The Brass Hats
pretended to believe the same among themselves. For all time the
British and the French Armies were to keep on hurling explosives at the
German Army from the same positions.
Occasionally a Brass Hat did intimate that the offensive would probably
come in the spring of 1917, if not later, and you accepted the
information as strictly confidential and indefinite, as you should
accept any received from a Brass Hat. It never occurred to anybody to
inquire if "1917" meant June or July of 1916. This would be as bad form
as to ask a man whose head was gray last year and is black this year if
he dyed his hair.
Those heavy howitzers, fresh from the foundry, drawn by big caterpillar
tractors, were all proceeding in one direction--toward the Somme.
Villages along their route were filling with troops. The nearer the
front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material.
Shells, the size of the milk cans at suburban stations, stood in close
order on the platforms beside the sidings of new light railways; shells
of all calibers were piled at new ammunition dumps; fields were cut by
the tracks of guns moving into position; steam rollers were road-making
in the midst of the long processions of motor trucks, heavy laden when
bound toward the trenches and empty when returning; barbed-wire
enclosures were ready as collecting stations for prisoners; clusters of
hospital tents at other points seemed out of proportion to the trickle
of wounded from customary trench warfare.
All this preparation, stretching over weeks and months, unemotional and
methodical, infinite in detail, prodigious in effort, suggested the work
of engineers and contractors and subcontractors in the building of some
great bridge or canal, with the workmen all in the same kind of uniform
and with managers, superintendents and foremen each having some insignia
of rank and the Brass Hats and Red Tabs the inspectors and auditors.
The officer installing a new casualty clearing station, or emplacing a
gun, or starting another ammunition dump, had not heard of any
offensive. He was only doing what he was told. It was not his business
to ask why of any Red Tab, any more than it was the business of a Red
Tab to ask why of a Brass Hat, or his business to know that the same
sort of thing was going on over a front of sixteen miles. Each one saw
only his little section of the hive. Orders strictly limited workers to
their sections at the same time that their lips were sealed. Contractors
were in no danger of strikes; employees received no extra pay for
overtime. It was as evident that the offensive was to be on the Somme as
that the circus has come to town, when you see tents rising at dawn in a
vacant lot while the elephants are standing in line.
Toward the end of June I asked the Red Tab who sat at the head of our
table if I might go to London on leave. He was surprised, I think, but
did not appear surprised. It is one of the requisites of a Red Tab that
he should not. He said that he was uncertain if leave were being granted
at present. This was unusual, as an intimation of refusal had never been
made on any previous occasion. When I said that it would be for only two
or three days, he thought that it could be arranged all right. What this
considerate Red Tab meant was that I should return "in time." Yet he had
not mentioned that there was to be any offensive and I had not. We had
kept the faith of military secrecy. Besides, I really did not know,
unless I opened a pigeonhole in my brain. It was also my business not to
know--the only business I had with the "big push" except to look on.
Over in London my friends surprised me by exclaiming, "What are you
doing here?" and, "Won't you miss the offensive which is about to
begin?" Now, what would a Brass Hat say in such an awkward emergency?
Would he look wise or unwise when he said it? Trying to look unwise, I
replied: "They have the men now and can strike any time that they
please. It's not my place to know where or when. I asked for leave and
they gave it." I was quite relieved and felt that I was almost worthy
of a secretive Brass Hat myself, when one man remarked: "They don't let
you know much, do they?"
To keep such immense preparations wholly a secret among any
English-speaking people would be out of the question. Only the Japanese
are mentally equipped for security of information. With other races it
is a struggling effort. Can you imagine Washington keeping a military
secret? You could hear the confidential whispers all the way from the
War Department to the Capitol. In such a great movement as that of the
Somme one weak link in a chain of tens of thousands of officers is
enough to break it, not to mention a million or so of privates.
IV
READY FOR THE BLOW
French national spirit--Our gardeners--Tuning up for the
attack--Policing the sky--Sausage balloons--Matter-of-fact,
systematic war--A fury of trench raids--Reserves marching
forward--Organized human will--Sons of the old country ready to
strike--The greatest struggle of the war about to begin.
Our headquarters during my first summer at the front had been in the
flat border region of the Pas de Calais, which seemed neither Flanders
nor France. Our second summer required that we should be nearer the
middle of the British line, as it extended southward, in order to keep
in touch with the whole. In the hilly country of Artois a less
comfortable chateau was compensated for by the smiling companionship of
neighbors in the fields and villages of the real France.
The quality of this sympathetic appeal was that of the thoroughbred
racial and national spirit of a great people, in the politeness which
gave to a thickset peasant woman a certain grace, in the smiles of the
land and its inhabitants, in that inbred patriotism which through the
centuries has created a distinctive civilization called French by the
same ready sacrifices for its continuity as those which were made on
the Marne and at Verdun. Flanders is not France, and France is
increasingly French as you proceed from Ypres to Amiens, the capital of
Picardy. I was glad that Picardy had been chosen as the scene of the
offensive. It made the blow seem more truly a blow for France. I was to
learn to love Picardy and its people under the test of battle.
In order that we might be near the field of the Somme we were again to
move our quarters, and we had the pang of saying good-by to another
garden and another gardener. All the gardeners of our different chateaux
had been philosophers. It was Louis who said that he would like to make
all the politicians who caused wars into a salad, accompanying his
threat with appropriate gestures; Charles who thought that once the
"Boches" were properly pruned they might be acceptable second-rate
members of international society; and Leon who wanted the Kaiser put to
the plow in a coat of corduroy as the best cure for his conceit. That
afternoon, when _au revoirs_ were spoken and our cars wound in and out
over the byroads of the remote countryside, not a soldier was visible
until we came to the great main road, where we had the signal that
peaceful surroundings were finally left behind in the distant, ceaseless
roar of the guns, like some gigantic drumbeat calling the armies to
combat.
A giant with nerves of telephone wires and muscles of steel and a human
heart seemed to be snarling his defiance before he sprang into action.
We knew the meaning of the set thunders of the preliminary bombardment.
That night to the eastward the sky was an aurora borealis of flashes;
and the next day we sought the source of the lightnings.
Seamed and tracked and gashed were the slopes behind the British line
and densely peopled with busy men in khaki. Every separate scene was
familiar to us out of our experience, but every one had taken on a new
meaning. The whole exerted a majestic spell. Graded like the British
social scale were the different calibers of guns. Those with the largest
reach were set farthest back. Fifteen-inch howitzer dukes or nine-inch
howitzer earls, with their big, ugly mouths and their deliberate and
powerful fire, fought alone, each in his own lair, whether under a tree
or in the midst of the ruins of a village. The long naval guns, though
of smaller caliber, had a still greater reach and were sending their
shells five to ten miles beyond the German trenches.
The eight-inch and six-inch howitzers were more gregarious. They worked
in groups of four and sometimes a number of batteries were in line.
Beyond them were those alert commoners, the field guns, rapid of fire
with their eighteen-pound shells. These seemed more tractable and
companionable, better suited for human association, less mechanically
brutal. They were not monstrous enough to require motor tractors to draw
them at a stately gait, but behind their teams could be up and away
across the fields on short notice, their caissons of ammunitions
creaking behind them. Along the communication trenches perspiring
soldiers carried "plum puddings" or the trench-mortar shells which were
to be fired from the front line and boxes of egg-shaped bombs which
fitted nicely in the palm of the hand for throwing.
It seemed that all the guns in the world must be firing as you listened
from a distance, although when you came into the area where the guns
were in tiers behind the cover of a favorable slope you found that many
were silent. The men of one battery might be asleep while its neighbor
was sending shells with a one-two-three deliberation. Any sleep or rest
that the men got must be there in the midst of this crashing babel from
steel throats. Again, the covers were being put over the muzzles for the
night, or, out of what had seemed blank hillside, a concealed battery
which had not been firing before sent out its vicious puffs of smoke
before its reports reached your ears. Every battery was doing as it was
told from some nerve-center; every one had its registered target on the
map--a trench, or a road, or a German battery, or where it was thought
that a German battery ought to be.
The flow of ammunition for all came up steadily, its expenditure
regulated on charts by officers who kept watch for extravagance and
aimed to make every shell count. A fortune was being fired away every
hour; a sum which would send a youth for a year to college or bring up a
child went into a single large shell which might not have the luck to
kill one human being as excuse for its existence; an endowment for a
maternity hospital was represented in a day's belch of destruction from
a single acre of trodden wheat land. One trench mortar would consume in
an hour plum puddings for an orphan school. For you might pause to think
of it in this way if you chose. Thousands do at the front.
Down on the banks of the Somme the blue uniforms of the French in place
of the British khaki hovered around the gun-emplacements; the
_soixante-quinze_ with its virtuoso artistic precision was neighbor to
the British eighteen-pounder. Guns, guns, guns--French and English! The
same nests of them opposite Gommecourt and at Estrées thundered across
at one another from either bank of the Somme through summer haze over
the green spaces of the islands edged with the silver of its tranquil
flow in the moonlight or its glare in the sunlight.