thrill because of its workmanlike and regulated progress. No
get-drunk-six-days-of-the-week-and-fight-like-h--l-on-Sunday business of
the swashbuckling age before Thiepval. Every man must do his part as
coolly as if he were walking a tight rope with no net to catch him, with
death to be reckoned with in the course of a systematic evolution.
"Very good! A trifle eager there! Excellent!" Howell sweeping the field
with his glasses was speaking in the expert appreciation of a football
coach watching his team at practice. "No machine guns yet," he said for
the second time, showing the apprehension that was in his mind.
I, too, had been listening for the staccato of the machine gun, which is
the most penetrating, mechanical and wicked, to my mind, of all the
instruments of the terrible battle orchestra, as sinister as the
clicking of a switch which you know will derail a passenger train. The
men were halfway to the German trench, now. Two and a half minutes of
the allotted five had passed. In my narrow sector of vision not one man
had yet fallen. They might have been in a manoeuver and their goal a
deserted ditch. Looking right and left my eye ran along the line of
sturdy, moving backs which seemed less concerned than the spectator. Not
only because you were on their side but as the reward of their
steadiness, you wanted them to conquer that stretch of first-line
fortifications. Any second you expected to see the first shell-burst of
the answering German barrage break in the midst of them.
Then came the first sharp, metallic note which there is no mistaking,
audible in the midst of shell-screams and gun-crashes, off to the right,
chilling your heart, quickening your observation with awful curiosity
and drawing your attention away from the men in front as you looked for
signs of a machine gun's gathering of a human harvest. Rat-tat-tat-tat
in quick succession, then a pause before another series instead of
continuous and slower cracks, and you knew that it was not a German but
a British machine gun farther away than you had thought.
More than ever you rejoiced in every one of the bursts of stored
lightning thick as fireflies in the blanket of smoke over the German
trench, for every one meant a shower of bullets to keep down enemy
machine guns. The French say "_Belle!_" when they see such a barrage,
and beautiful is the word for it to those men who were going across the
field toward this shell-made nimbus looking too soft in the bright
sunlight to have darts of death. All the shell-bursts seemed to be in a
breadth of twenty or thirty yards. How could guns firing at a range of
from two to five thousand yards attain such accuracy!
The men were three-quarters of the distance, now. As they drew nearer to
the barrage another apprehension numbed your thought. You feared to see
a "short"--one of the shells from their own guns which did not carry far
enough bursting among the men--and this, as one English soldier who had
been knocked over by a short said, with dry humor, was "very
discouraging, sir, though I suppose it is well meant." A terrible thing,
that, to the public, killing your own men with your own shells. It is
better to lose a few of them in this way than many from German machine
guns by lifting the barrage too soon, but fear of public indignation had
its influence in the early days of British gunnery. The better the
gunnery the closer the infantry can go and the greater its confidence. A
shell that bursts fifteen or twenty yards short means only the slightest
fault in length of fuse, error of elevation, or fault in registry, back
where the muzzles are pouring out their projectiles from the other side
of the slope. And there were no shorts that day. Every shell that I saw
burst was "on." It was perfect gunnery.
Now it seemed that the men were going straight into the blanket over the
trenches still cut with flashes. Some forward ones who had become eager
were at the edge of the area of dust-spatters from shrapnel bullets in
the white chalk. Didn't they know that another twenty yards meant death?
Was their methodical phlegm such that they acted entirely by rule? No,
they knew their part. They stopped and stood waiting. Others were on the
second of the five minutes' allowance as suddenly all the flashes ceased
and nothing remained over the trench but the mantle of smoke. The
barrage had been lifted from the first to the second-line German trench
as you lift the spray of a hose from one flower bed to another.
This was the moment of action for the men of the charge, not one of whom
had yet fired a shot. Each man was distinctly outlined against the white
background as, bayonets glistening and hands drawn back with bombs ready
to throw, they sprang forward to be at the mouths of the dugouts before
the Germans came out. Some leaped directly into the trench, others ran
along the parapet a few steps looking for a vantage point or throwing a
bomb as they went before they descended. It was a quick, urgent,
hit-and-run sort of business and in an instant all were out of sight and
the fighting was man to man, with the guns of both sides keeping their
hands off this conflict under ground. The entranced gaze for a moment
leaving that line of chalk saw a second British wave advancing in the
same way as the first from the British first-line trench.
"All in along the whole line. Bombing their way forward there!" said
Howell, with matter-of-fact understanding of the progress of events.
I blinked tired eyes and once more pressed them to the twelve diameters
of magnification, every diameter having full play in the clear light. I
saw nothing but little bursts of smoke rising out of the black streak in
the chalk which was the trench itself, each one from an egg of high
explosive thrown at close quarters but not numerous enough to leave any
doubt of the result and very evidently against a few recalcitrants who
still held out.
Next, a British soldier appeared on the parapet and his attitude was
that of one of the military police directing traffic at a busy
crossroads close to the battle front. His part in the carefully worked
out system was shown when a figure in green came out of the trench with
hands held up in the approved signal of surrender the world over. The
figure was the first of a file with hands up--and very much in earnest
in this attitude, too, which is the one that the British and the French
consider most becoming in a German--who were started on toward the
first-line British trench. All along the front small bands of prisoners
were appearing in the same way. There would have been something
ridiculous about it, if it had not been so real.
For the most part, the prisoners had been breached from dugouts which
had no exit through galleries after the Germans had been held fast by
the barrage. It was either a case of coming out at once or being bombed
to death in their holes; so they came out.
"A live prisoner would be of more use to his fatherland one day than a
dead one, even though he had no more chance to fight again than a rabbit
held up by the ears," as one of the German prisoners said.
"More use to yourself, too," remarked his captor.
"That had occurred to me, also," admitted the German.
During the filing out of the different bags of prisoners two incidents
passed before my eye with a realism that would have been worth a small
fortune to a motion picture man if equally dramatic ones had not been
posed. A German sprang out of the trench, evidently either of a mind to
resist or else in a panic, and dropped behind one of the piles of chalk
thrown up in the process of excavation. A British soldier went after him
and he held up his hands and was dispatched to join one of the groups.
Another who sought cover in the same way was of different temperament,
or perhaps resistance was inspired by the fact that he had a bomb. He
threw it at a British soldier who seemed to dodge it and drop on all
fours, the bomb bursting behind him. Bombs then came from all directions
at the German. There was no time to parley; he had made his choice and
must pay the price. He rolled over after the smoke had risen from the
explosions and then remained a still green blot against the chalk. A
British soldier bent over the figure in a hasty examination and then
sprang into the trench, where evidently he was needed.
"The Germans are very slow with their shell fire," said Howell in the
course of his ejaculations, as he watched the operations.
Answering barrages, including a visitation to our own position which was
completely exposed, were in order. Howell himself had been knocked over
by a shell here during the last attack. One explanation given later by a
German officer for the tardiness of the German guns was that the staff
had thought the British too stupid to attack from that direction, which
pleased Howell as showing the advantage of racial reputation as an aid
to strategy.
However, the German artillery was not altogether unresponsive. It was
putting some "krumps" into the neighborhood of the British first line
and one of the bands of prisoners ran into the burst of a
five-point-nine. Ran is the word, for they were going as fast as they
could to get beyond their own curtain of fire, which experience told
them would soon be due. I saw this lot submerged in the spout of smoke
and dust but did not see how many if any were hit, as the sound of a
machine gun drew my attention across the dead grass of the old No Man's
Land to the German--I should say the former German--first-line trench
where an Englishman had his machine gun on the _parados_ and was
sweeping the field across to the German second-line trench. Perhaps some
of the Germans who had run away from the barrage at the start had been
hiding in shell-craters or had shown signs of moving or there were
targets elsewhere.
So far so good, as Howell remarked. That supposedly impregnable German
fortification that had repulsed the first British attempt had been taken
as easily as if it were a boy's snow fort, thanks to the patent curtain
of fire and the skill that had been developed by battle lessons. It was
retribution for the men who had fallen in vain on July 1st. Howell was
not thinking of that, but of the second objective in the afternoon's
plan. By this time not more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed since
the first charge had "gone over the lid." Out of the cut in the welt of
chalk the line of helmets rose again and England started across the
field toward the German second-line trench, which was really a part of
the main first-line fortification on the slope, in the same manner as
toward the first.
What about their protecting barrage? My eyes had been so intently
occupied that my ears had been uncommunicative and in a start of glad
surprise I realized that the same infernal sweep of shells was going
overhead and farther up on the Ridge fireflies were flashing out of the
mantle of smoke that blanketed the second line. Now the background
better absorbed the khaki tint and the figures of the men became more
and more hazy until they disappeared altogether as the flashes in front
of them ceased. Howell had to translate from the signals results which I
could not visually verify. One by one items of news appeared in rocket
flashes through the gathering haze which began to obscure the slope
itself.
"I think we have everything that we expected to take this afternoon,"
said Howell, at length. "The Germans are very slow to respond. I think
we rather took them by surprise."
They had not even begun shelling their old first line, which they ought
to have known was now in British possession and which they must have had
registered, as a matter of course; or possibly their own intelligence
was poor and they had no real information of what had been proceeding on
the slope under the clouds of smoke, or their wires had been cut and
their messengers killed by shell fire. This was certain, that the
British in the first-line German trench had a choice lot of dugouts in
good condition for shelter, as the patent barrage does not smash in the
enemy's homes, only closes the doors with curtains of death.
"I hope you're improving your dugouts," British soldiers would call out
across No Man's Land, "as that is all the better for us when we take
them!"
We stayed on till Howell's expert eye had had its fill of details, with
no burst of shells to interfere with our comfort; though by the rules we
ought to have had a good "strafing," which was another reminder of my
debt to the German for his consideration to the American correspondent
at the British front.
"What do you think of our patent barrage, now?" said the artillery
general returning from his post of observation.
"Wonderful!" was all that one could say.
"A good show!" said Howell.
The rejoicing of both was better expressed in their eyes than in words.
Good news, too, for the corps commander smoking his pipe and waiting,
and for every battalion engaged--oh, particularly for the battalions!
"Congratulations!" The exclamation was passed back and forth as we met
other officers on our way to brigade headquarters in a dugout on the
hillside, where Howell's felicitations to the happy brigadier on the way
that his men had gone in were followed by suggestions and a discussion
about future plans, which I left to them while I had a look through the
brigadier's telescope at Thiepval Ridge under the patterns of shell fire
of average days, which proved that the Germans were making no attempt at
a counter-attack to recover lost ground. I imagined that the German
staff was dumfounded to hear that their redoubtable old first line could
possibly have been taken with so little fireworks.
It was when I came to the guns on our return that I felt an awe which I
wanted to translate into appreciation. They were firing slowly now or
not firing at all, and the idle gunners were lounging about. They had
not seen their own curtain of fire or the infantry charge; they had been
as detached from the action as the crew of a battleship turret. It was
their accuracy and their coördination with the infantry and the
infantry's coördination with the barrage that had expressed better than
volumes of reports the possibilities of the offensive with waves of men
advancing behind waves of shell fire, which was applied in the taking of
Douaumont later and must be the solution of the problem of a decision
on the Western front.
Above the communication trenches the steel helmets of the British and
the gray fatigue caps of German prisoners were bobbing toward the rear
and at the casualty clearing station the doctor said, "Very light!" in
answer to the question about losses. The prisoners were in unusually
good fettle even for men safe out of shell fire; many had no chalk on
their clothes to indicate a struggle. They had been sitting in their
dugouts and walked out when an Englishman appeared at the door. Yes,
they said that they had been caught just before relief, and the relief
had been carried out in an unexpected fashion. If they must be taken
they, too, liked the patent barrage.
"I'll let you know when there's to be another show," said Howell, as we
parted at corps headquarters; but none could ever surpass this one in
its success or its opportunity of intimate observation.
This was the last time I saw him. A few days later, on one of his tours
to study the ground for an attack, he was killed by a shell. Army custom
permits the mention of his name because he is dead. He was a steadfast
friend, an able soldier, an upright, kindly, high-minded gentleman; and
when I was asked, not by the lady who had never kept up her interest so
long in anything as in this war, but by another, if living at the front
is a big strain, the answer is in the word that comes that a man whom
you have just seen in the fulness of life and strength is gone.
XXV
CANADA IS STUBBORN
What is Canada fighting for?--The Kaiser has brought Canadians
together--The land of immense distances--Canada's unfaltering
spirit--Canada our nearest neighbor geographically and
sentimentally--Ypres salient mud--Canadians invented the trench
raid--A wrestling fight in the mud--Germans "try it on" the
Canadians--"The limit" in artillery fire--Maple Leaf spirit--Baseball
talk on the firing line--A good sprinkling of Americans.
One day the Canadians were to lift their feet out of the mire of the
Ypres salient and take the high, dry road to the Somme front, and anyone
with a whit of chivalry in his soul would have rejoiced to know that
they were to have their part in the big movement of Sept. 15th. But let
us consider other things and other fighting before we come to the taking
of Courcelette.
When I was home in the winter of 1915-16, for the first time the border
between the United States and Canada drew a line in sharp contrasts. The
newspapers in Canada had their casualty lists, parents were giving their
sons and wives their husbands to go three thousand miles to endure
hardship and risk death for a cause which to them had no qualifications
of a philosophic internationalism. Everything was distinct. Sacrifice
and fortitude, life and death, and the simple meaning words were masters
of the vocabulary.
Some people might ask why Canada should be pouring out her blood in
Europe; what had Flanders to do with her? England was fighting to save
her island, France for the sanctity of her soil, but what was Canada
fighting for? As I understood it, she was fighting for Canada. A blow
had been struck against her, though it was struck across the Atlantic,
and across the Atlantic she was going to strike back.
She had had no great formative war. Pardeburg was a kind of expedition
of brave men, like the taking of San Juan Hill. It did not sink deep
into the consciousness of the average Canadian, who knew only that some
neighbor of his had been in South Africa. Our own formative war was the
Revolution, not the Civil War where brother fought brother. The
Revolution made a mold which, perhaps, instead of being impressed upon
succeeding generations of immigrants may have only given a veneer to
them. A war may be necessary to make them molten for another shaping.
No country wanted war less than Canada, but when war came its flame made
Canada molten with Canadian patriotism. As George III. brought the
Carolinas and Massachusetts together, so the Kaiser has brought the
Canadian provinces together. The men from that cultivated, rolling
country of Southern Ontario, from New Brunswick and the plains and the
coast and a quota from the neat farms of Quebec have met face to face,
not on railroad trains, not through representatives in Parliament or in
convention, but in billets and trenches. Whatever Canada is, she is not
small. She is particularly the land of immense distances; her breadth is
greater than that of the United States. All of the great territorial
expanse of Canada in its manhood, in the thoughts of those at home, was
centered in a few square miles of Flanders.
I was in Canada when only the first division had had its trial and
recruiting was at full blast; and again when three hundred and fifty
thousand had joined the colors and Canada, now feeling the full measure
of loss of life, seemed unfaltering, which was the more remarkable in a
new country where livelihood is easy to gain and Opportunity knocks at
the door of youth if he has only the energy to take her by the hand and
go her way. I may add that not all the youth about Toronto or any other
town who gave as their reason for not enlisting that they were American
citizens actually were. They were not "too _proud_ to fight," whatever
other reason they had, for they had no pride; and if honest Quakers they
would not have given a lying excuse.
Out in France I heard talk about this Canadian brigade being better than
that one, and that an Eastern Canada man wanted no leading from a
Western Canada man, and that not all who were winning military crosses
were hardy frontiersmen but some were lawyers and clerks in Montreal or
Toronto--or should I put Toronto first, or perhaps Ottawa or
Winnipeg--and more talk expressive of the rivalry which generals say is
good for spirit of corps. Moose Jaw Street was across from Halifax
Avenue and Vancouver Road from Hamilton Place in the same community.
As I was not connected with any part of Canada, the Canadians, with
their Maple Leaf emblem, were all Canadians to me; men across the border
which we pass in coming and going without change of language or
steam-heated cars or iced-water tanks. Some Canadians think that the
United States with its more than a hundred millions may feel patronizing
toward their eight millions, when after Courcelette if a Canadian had
patronized the United States I should not have felt offended. I have
even heard some fools say that the two countries might yet go to war,
which shows how absurd some men have to be in order to attract
attention. All of this way of thinking on both sides should be placed on
a raft in the middle of Lake Erie and supplied with bombs to fight it
out among themselves under a curtain of fire; and their relatives ought
to feel a deep relief after the excursion steamers that came from
Toronto, Cleveland and Buffalo to see the show had returned home.
To listen to certain narrators you might think that it was the Allies
who always got the worst of it in the Ypres salient, but the German did
not like the salient any better than they. I never met anybody who did
like it. German prisoners said that German soldiers regarded it as a
sentence of death to be sent to the salient. There are many kinds of mud
and then there is Ypres salient mud, which is all kinds together with a
Belgian admixture. I sometimes thought that the hellish outbreaks by
both sides in this region were due to the reason which might have made
Job run amuck if all the temper he had stored up should have broken out
in a storm.
This is certain, that the Canadians took their share in the buffets in
the mud, not through any staff calculation but partly through German
favoritism and the workings of German psychology. Consider that the
first volunteer troops to be put in the battle line in France weeks
before any of Kitchener's Army was the first Canadian division, in
answer to its own request for action, which is sufficient soldierly
tribute of a commander to Canadian valor! That proud first division,
after it had been well mud-soaked and had its hand in, was caught in
the gas attack. It refused to yield when it was only human to yield, and
stood resolute in the fumes between the Germans and success and even
counter-attacked. Moreover, it was Canadians who introduced the trench
raid.
If the Canadians did not particularly love the Germans, do you see any
reason why the Germans should love the Canadians? It was unpleasant to
suffer repulse by troops from an unmilitary, new country. Besides,
German psychology reasoned that if Canadians at the front were made to
suffer heavy losses the men at home would be discouraged from enlisting.
Why not? What had Canada to gain by coming to fight in France? It does
not appear an illogical hypothesis until you know the Canadians.
However, it must not be understood that other battalions, brigades and
divisions, English and Scotch, did not suffer as heavily as the
Canadians. They did; and do not forget that in the area which has seen
the hardest, bloodiest, meanest, nastiest, ghastliest fighting in the
history of the world the Germans, too, have had their full share of
losses. The truth is that if any normal man was stuck in the mud of the
Ypres salient and another wanted his place he would say, "Take it! I'm
only trying to get out! We've got equally bad morasses in the Upper
Yukon;" and retire to a hill and set up a machine gun.
When a Canadian officer was asked if he had organized some trenches that
his battalion had taken his reply, "How can you organize pea soup?"
filled a long-felt want in expression to characterize the nature of
trench-making in that kind of terrain. Yet in that sea of slimy and
infected mush men have fought for the possession of cubic feet of the
mixture as if it had the qualities of Balm of Gilead--which was also
logical. What appears most illogical to the outsider is sometimes most
logical in war. It was a fight for mastery, and mastery is the first
step in a war of frontal positions.