all the elevations that a certain corps commander told the story of the
whole attack with a simplicity and frankness which was a victory of
character even if he had not won a victory in battle. He rehearsed the
details of preparation, which were the same in their elaborate care as
those of corps which had succeeded; and he did not say that luck had
been against him--indeed, he never once used the word--but merely that
the German fortifications had been too strong and the gunfire too heavy.
He bore himself in the same manner that he would in his house in
England; but his eyes told of suffering and when he spoke of his men his
voice quavered.
Where the young officer had said that it had not gone well this time and
a private had said, "We must try again, sir!" the general had said that
repulse was an incident of a prolonged operation in the initial stage,
which sounded more professional but was no more illuminating. All spoke
of lessons learned for the future. Thus they had stood the supreme test
which repulse alone can give.
What could an observer say or do that was not banal in the eyes of men
who had been through such experiences? Only listen and look on with the
awe of one who feels that he is in the presence of immortal heroism. And
an hour's motor ride away were troops in the glow of that success which
is without comparison in its physical elation--the success of arms.
VII
OUT OF THE HOPPER OF BATTLE
An army of movement--Taking over the captured space--At Minden Post,
a crossroads of battle--German prisoners--Their desire to live--Their
variety--The ambulance line--The refuse from the hopper of
battle--Resting in the battle line--Reminiscences of the fighters--A
mighty crater--The dugouts around Fricourt--Method of taking a
dugout--The litter over the field.
When I went southward through that world of triumph back of Mametz and
Montauban I kept thinking of a strong man who had broken free of his
bonds and was taking a deep breath before another effort. Where from
Thiepval to Gommecourt the men who had expected to be organizing new
trenches were back in their old ones and the gunners who had hoped to
move their guns forward were in the same positions and all the plans for
supplying an army in advance were still on paper, to the southward
anticipation had become realization and the system devised to carry on
after success was being applied.
A mighty, eager industry pervaded the rear. Here, at last, was an army
of movement. New roads must be made in order that the transport could
move farther forward; medical corps men were establishing more advanced
clearing stations; new ammunition dumps were being located; military
police were adapting traffic regulations to the new situation. Old
trenches had been filled up to give trucks and guns passageway. In every
face was the shining desire which overcomes fatigue. An army long
trench-tied was stretching its limbs as it found itself in the open. At
corps headquarters lines were drawn on the maps of positions gained and
beyond them the lines of new objectives.
Could it be possible that our car was running along that road back of
the first-line trenches where it would have been death to show your head
two days ago? And could battalions in reserve be lying in the open on
fields where forty-eight hours previously a company would have drawn the
fire of half a dozen German batteries? Was it dream or reality that you
were walking about in the first-line German trenches? So long had you
been used to stationary warfare, with your side and the other side
always in the same places hedged in by walls of shell fire, that the
transformation seemed as amazing as if by some magic overnight lower
Broadway with all its high buildings had been moved across the North
River.
Among certain scenes which memory still holds dissociated from others by
their outstanding characterization, that of Minden Post remains vivid
as illustrating the crossroads man-traffic of battle. A series of big
dugouts, of houses and caves with walls of sandbags, back of the first
British line near Carnoy was a focus of communication trenches and the
magnet to the men hastening from bullet-swept, shell-swept spaces to
security. The hot breath of the firing-line had scorched them and cast
them out and they came together in congestion at this clearing station
like a crowd at a gate. Eyes were bloodshot and set in deep hollows from
fatigue, those of the British having the gleam of triumph and those of
the Germans a dazed inquiry as they awaited directions.
Only a half-hour before, perhaps, the Germans had been fighting with the
ferocity of racial hate and the method of iron discipline. Now they were
simply helpless, disheveled human beings, their short boots and green
uniforms whitened by chalk dust. Hunger had weakened the stamina of many
of them in the days when the preliminary British bombardment had shut
them off from supplies; but none looked as if he were really underfed. I
never saw a German prisoner who was except for the intervals when battle
kept the food waiting at the rear away from his mouth, though some who
were under-sized and ill-proportioned looked incapable of absorbing
nutrition.
In order to make them fight better they had been told that the British
gave no quarter. Out of hell, with shells no longer bursting overhead or
bullets whimpering and hissing past, they were conscious only that they
were alive, and being alive, though they had risked life as if death
were an incident, now freed of discipline and of the exhilaration of
battle, their desire to live was very human in the way that hands shot
up if a sharp word were spoken to them by an officer. They were wholly
lacking in military dignity as they filed by; but it returned as by a
magic touch when a non-commissioned officer was bidden to take charge of
a batch and march them to an inclosure. Then, in answer to the command
shoulders squared, heels rapped together, and the instinct of long
training put a ramrod to their backbones which stiffened mere tired
human beings into soldiers. Distinct gratitude was evident when their
papers were taken for examination over the return of their
identification books, which left them still docketed and numbered
members of "system" and not mere lost souls as they would otherwise have
considered themselves.
"All kinds of Boches in our exhibit!" said a British soldier.
As there were, in truth: big, hulking, awkward fellows, beardless
youths, men of forty with stoops formed in civil life, professional men
with spectacles fastened to their ears by cords and fat men with the
cranial formation and physiognomy in keeping with French comic pictures
of the "type Boche."
Mixed with the British wounded they came, tall and short, thin and
portly, the whole a motley procession of friend and foe in a strange
companionship which was singularly without rancor. I saw only one
incident of any harshness of captor to prisoner. A big German ran
against the wounded arm of a Briton, who winced with pain and turned and
gave the German a punch in very human fashion with his free arm. Another
German with his slit trousers' leg flapping around a bandage was leaning
on the arm of a Briton whose other arm was in a sling. A giant Prussian
bore a spectacled comrade pickaback. Germans impressed as litter-bearers
brought in still forms in khaki. Water and tobacco, these are the
bounties which no man refuses to another at such a time as this. The
gurgle of a canteen at a parched mouth on that warm July day was the
first gift to wounded Briton or German and the next a cigarette.
Every returning Briton was wounded, of course, but many of the Germans
were unwounded. Long rows of litters awaited the busy doctors' visit for
further examination. First dressings put on by the man himself or by a
comrade in the firing-line were removed and fresh dressings substituted.
Ambulance after ambulance ran up, the litters of those who were "next"
were slipped in behind the green curtains, and on soft springs over
spinning rubber tires the burdens were sped on their way to England.
Officers were bringing order out of the tide which flowed in across the
fields and the communication trenches as if they were used to such
situations, with the firing-line only two thousand yards away. The
seriously wounded were separated from the lightly wounded, who must not
expect to ride but must go farther on foot. The shell-mauled German
borne pickaback by a comrade found himself in an ambulance across from a
Briton and his bearer was to know sleep after a square meal in the
prisoners' inclosure.
And all this was the refuse from the hopper of battle, which has no
service for prisoners unless to carry litters and no use at all for
wounded; and it was only a by-product of the proof of success compared
to a trip over the field itself--a field still fresh.
Artillery caissons and ambulances and signal wire carts and other
specially favored transport--favored by risk of being in range of
hundreds of guns--now ran along the road in the former No Man's Land
which for nearly two years had had no life except the patrols at night.
The bodies of those who fell on such nocturnal scouting expeditions
could not be recovered and their bones lay there in the midst of rotting
green and khaki in the company of the fresh dead of the charge who were
yet to be buried.
There was the battalion which took the trenches resting yonder on a
hillside, while another battalion took its place in the firing-line. The
men had stripped off their coats; they were washing and making tea and
sprawling in the sunshine, these victors, looking across at curtains of
fire where the battle was raging. Thus reserves might have waited at
Gettysburg or at Waterloo.
"They may put some shells into you," I suggested to their colonel.
"Perhaps," he said. The prospect did not seem to disturb him or the men.
It was a possibility hazy to minds which asked only sleep or relaxation
after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any
aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sausage balloons, either.
Since our planes brought down those six in flames the day before the
attack the others have been very coy."
His young officers were all New Army products; he, the commander, being
the only regular. There were still enough regulars left to provide one
for each of the New Army battalions, in some cases even two.
"The men were splendid," he said, "just as good as regulars. They went
in without any faltering and we had a stiffish bit of trench in front of
us, you know. It's jolly out here, isn't it?"
He was tired and perhaps he would be killed to-morrow, but nothing could
prevent him from going some distance to show us the way to the trenches
that his men had taken. They were heroes to him and he was one to them;
and they had won. That was the thing, victory, though they regarded it
as a matter of course, which gave them a glow warmer than the sunlight
as they lay at ease on the grass. They had "been in;" they had seen the
day for which they had long waited. A quality of mastery was in their
bearing, but their elation was tempered by the thought of the missing
comrades, the dead.
"I wish as long as Bill had to go that he hadn't fallen before we got to
the trench," said one soldier. "He had set his heart on seeing what a
Boche dugout was like."
"George was beside me when a Boche got him with a bomb. I did for the
Boche with a bayonet," said another.
"When the machine gun began I thought that it would get us all, but we
had to go on."
They were matter-of-fact, dwelling on the simple essentials. Men had
died; men had been wounded; men had survived. This was all according to
expectation. Mostly, they did not rehearse their experiences. Their
brains had had emotion enough; their bodies asked for rest. They lay
silently enjoying the fact of life and sunlight. Details which were lost
in the haze of action would develop in the memory in later years like
the fine points of a photographic plate.
The former German trench on a commanding knoll had little resemblance to
a trench. Here artillerists had fulfilled infantry requirements to the
letter. Areas of shell-craters lay on either side of the tumbled walls
and dugout entrances were nearly all closed. The infantry which took the
position met no fire in front, but had an enfilade at one point from a
machine gun. Where the dead lay told exactly the breadth of its sweep
through which the charge had unfalteringly passed; and this was only a
first objective. As you could see, the charge had gone on to its second
with slight loss. A young officer after being wounded had crawled into a
shell-crater, drawn his rubber sheet over him and so had died
peacefully, the clot of his life's blood on the earth beside him.
In the field of ruins around Fricourt a mighty crater of one of the
mines exploded on July 1st at the hour of attack was large enough to
hold a battalion. Germans had gone aloft in a spatter with its vast
plume of smoke and dust scooped from the bowels of the earth. Famous
since to sightseers of war were the dugouts around Fricourt which were
the last word in German provision against attack. The making of dugouts
is standardized like everything else in this war. There is the same
angle of entrance, the same flight of steps to that underground refuge,
in keeping with the established pattern. Depth, capacity and comfort are
the result of local initiative and industry. There may be beds and
tables and tiers of bunks. Many such chambers were as undisturbed as if
never a shell had burst in the neighborhood. The Germans in occupation
had been told to hold on; a counter-attack would relieve them. The faith
of some of them endured so well that they had to be blasted out by
explosives before they would surrender.
There was reassurance in the proximity of such good dugouts when
habitable to a correspondent if shells began to fall, as well as
protection for the British in reserve. Some whence came foul odors were
closed by the British as the simplest form of burial for the dead within
who had waited for bombs to be thrown before surrendering. For the
method of taking a dugout had long since become as standardized as its
construction. The men inside could have their choice from the Briton at
the entrance.
"Either file out or take what we send," as a soldier put it. "We can't
leave you there to come out and fire into our backs, as the Kaiser told
you to do, when we've started on ahead."
You could follow for miles the ruins of the first line, picking your way
among German dead in all attitudes, while a hand or a head or a foot
stuck out of the shell-hammered chalk mixed with flesh and fragments of
clothing, the thing growing nauseatingly horrible and your wonder
increasing as to how gunfire had accomplished the destruction and how
men had been able to conquer the remains that the shells had left. It
was a prodigious feat, emphasizing again the importance of the months of
preparation.
And the litter over the whole field! This, in turn, expressed how varied
and immense is the material required for such operations. One had in
mind the cleaning up after some ghastly debauch. Shell-fragments were
mixed with the earth; piles of cartridge cases lay beside pools of
blood. Trench mortars poked their half-filled muzzles out of the toppled
trench walls. Bundles of rocket flares, empty ammunition boxes, steel
helmets crushed in by shell-fragments, gasbags, eye-protectors against
lachrymatory shells, spades, water bottles, unused rifle grenades, egg
bombs, long stick-handled German bombs, map cases, bits of German "K.K."
bread, rifles, the steel jackets of shells and unexploded shells of all
calibers were scattered about the field between the irregular welts of
chalky soil where shell fire had threshed them to bits.
The rifles and accoutrements of the fallen were being gathered in piles,
this being, too, a part of a prearranged system, as was the gathering of
the wounded and later of the dead who had worn them. Big, barelegged
forms of the sturdy Highland regiment which would not halt for a machine
gun were being brought in and laid in a German communication trench
which had only to be closed to make a common grave, each identification
disk being kept as a record of where the body lay. Another communication
trench near by was reserved for German dead who were being gathered at
the same time as the British. In life the foes had faced each other
across No Man's Land. In death they were also separated.
Up to the first-line German trenches, of course, there were only British
dead, those who had fallen in the charge. It was this that made it seem
as if the losses had been all on one side. In the German trenches the
entries on the other side of the ledger appeared; and on the fields and
in the communication trenches lay green figures. Over that open space
they were scattered green dots; again, where they had run for cover to a
wood's edge, they lay thick as they had dropped under the fire of a
machine gun which the British had brought into action. A fierce game of
hare and hounds had been played. Both German and British dead lay facing
in the same direction when they were in the open, the Germans in
retreat, the British in pursuit. An officer called attention to this
grim proof that the initiative was with the British.
By the number of British dead lying in No Man's Land or by the blood
clots when the bodies had been removed, it was possible to tell what
price battalions had paid for success. Nothing could bring back the
lives of comrades who had fallen in front of Thiepval to the survivors
of that action; but could they have seen the broad belts of No Man's
Land with only an occasional prostrate figure it would have had the
reassurance that another time they might have easier going. Wherever the
Germans had brought a machine gun into action the results of its work
lay a stark warning of the necessity of silencing these automatic
killers before a charge. Yet from Mametz to Montauban the losses had
been light, leaving no doubt that the Germans, convinced that the weight
of the attack would be to the north, had been caught napping.
The Allies could not conceal the fact and general location of their
offensive, but they did conceal its plan as a whole. The small number of
shell-craters attested that no such artillery curtains of fire had been
concentrated here as from Thiepval to Gommecourt. Probably the Germans
had not the artillery to spare or had drawn it off to the north.
All branches of the winning army making themselves at home in the
conquered area among the dead and the litter behind the old German first
line--this was the fringe of the action. Beyond was the battle itself,
with the firing-line still advancing under curtains of shell-bursts.
VIII
FORWARD THE GUNS!
An audacious battery--"An unusual occasion"--Guns to the front at
night--Close to the firing-line--Not so dangerous for observers--The
German lines near by--Advantages of even a gentle slope--Skilfully
chosen German positions--A game of hide and seek with
death--Business-like progress--Haze, shell-smoke and moving
figures--Each figure part of the "system."
Hadn't that battery commander mistaken his directions when he emplaced
his howitzers behind a bluff in the old No Man's Land? Didn't he know
that the German infantry was only the other side of the knoll and that
two or three score German batteries were in range? I looked for a
tornado to descend forthwith upon the gunners' heads. I liked their
audacity, but did not court their company when I could not break a habit
of mind bred in the rules of trench-tied warfare where the other fellow
was on the lookout for just such fair targets as they.
For the moment these "hows" were not firing and the gunners were in a
little circumscribed world of their own, dissociated from the movement
around them as they busily dug pits for their ammunition. In due course
someone might tell them to begin registering on a certain point or to
turn loose on one which they had already registered. Meanwhile, very
workmanlike in their shirt-sleeves, they had no concern with the traffic
in the rear, except as it related to their own supply of shells, or with
the litter of the field, or the dead, or the burial parties and the
scattered wounded passing back from the firing-line. Their business
relations were exclusively with the battle area hidden by the bluff. I
thought that they were "rather fond of themselves" (as the British say)
that morning, though not so much so, perhaps, as the crew of the
eighteen pounders still farther forward within about a thousand yards of
the Germans whom they were pelting with shrapnel.
Ordinarily, the eighteen pounders were expected to keep a distance of
four or five thousand yards; but this was "rather an unusual occasion"
as an officer explained. It would never do for the eighteen pounders to
be wall-flowers; they must be on the ballroom floor. Had these men who
were mechanically slipping shells into the gun-breeches slept last night
or the previous night? Oh, yes, for two or three hours when they were
not firing.
What did fatigue matter to an eighteen-pounder spirit released from the
eternal grind of trench warfare and pushing across the open in the way
that eighteen pounders were meant to do? Weren't they horse artillery?
What use had they had for their horses in the immovable Ypres salient
except when they drew back their guns to the billets after their tour of
duty?--they who had drilled and drilled in evolutions in England under
the impression that field guns were a mobile arm!
When orders came on the afternoon of July 1st to go ahead "right into
it" it was like a summons to a holiday for a desk-ridden man brought up
in the Rockies. Out into the night with creaking wheels and caissons
following with sharp words of urging from the sergeant, "Now, wheelers,
as I taught you at Aldershot," as they went across old trenches or up a
stiff slope and into the darkness, with transport giving them the right
of way, and on to a front that was in motion, with officers studying
their maps and directions by the pocket flashlight--this was something
like. And a young lieutenant hurried forward to where the rifles were
talking to signal back the results of the guns firing from the midst of
the battle. Something like, indeed! The fellows training their pieces in
keeping with his instructions might be in for a sudden concentration of
blasts from the enemy, of course. Wasn't that part of the experience?
Wasn't it their place to take their share of the pounding, and didn't
they belong to the guns?
These were examples close at hand, but sprinkled about the well-won area
I saw the puffs from other British batteries which, after a nocturnal
journey, morning found close to the firing-line. While I was moving
about in the neighborhood I cast glances in the direction of that
particular battery of eighteen pounders which was still serenely firing
without being disturbed by the German guns. There was something unreal
about it after nearly two years of the Ypres salient.
But the worst shock to a trench-tied habit of mind was when I stood upon
the parapet of a German trench and saw ahead the British firing-line and
the German, too. I ducked as instinctively, according to past training,
as if I had seen a large, black, murderous thing coming straight for my
head. In the stalemate days a dozen sharpshooters waiting for such
opportunities would have had a try at you; a machine gun might have
loosened up, and even batteries of artillery in their search for game to
show itself from cover did not hesitate to snipe with shells at an
individual.
I must be dead; at least, I ought to be according to previous formulæ;
but realizing that I was still alive and that nothing had cracked or
whistled overhead, I took another look and then remained standing. I had
been considering myself altogether too important a mortal. German guns
and snipers were not going to waste ammunition on a non-combatant on the
skyline when they had an overwhelming number of belligerent targets. A
few shrapnel breaking remotely were all that we had to bother us, and
these were sparingly sent with the palpable message, "We'll let you
fellows in the rear know what we would do to you if we were not so
preoccupied with other business."
I was near enough to see the operations; to have gone nearer would have
been to face in the open the sweep of bullets over the heads of the
British front line hugging the earth, which is not wise in these days of
the machine gun. A correspondent likes to see without being shot at and
his lot is sometimes to be shot at without being able to see anything
except the entrance of a dugout, which on some occasions is more
inviting than the portals of a palace.