"Under Fire"
One cold day on the Aisne, when the Germans had just withdrawn to
the east bank and the Allies held the west, the French soldiers built
huge bonfires and huddled around them. When the "Jack Johnsons,"
as they call the six-inch howitzer shells that strike with a burst of black
smoke, began to fall, sooner than leave the warm fires the soldiers
accepted the chance of being hit by the shells. Their officers had to
order them back. I saw this and wrote of it. A friend refused to credit
it. He said it was against his experience. He did not believe that, for
the sake of keeping warm, men would chance being killed.
But the incident was quite characteristic. In times of war you
constantly see men, and women, too, who, sooner than suffer
discomfort or even inconvenience, risk death. The psychology of the
thing is, I think, that a man knows very little about being dead but has
a very acute knowledge of what it is to be uncomfortable. His brain is
not able to grasp death but it is quite capable of informing him that his
fingers are cold. Often men receive credit for showing coolness and
courage in times of danger when, in reality, they are not properly
aware of the danger and through habit are acting automatically. The
girl in Chicago who went back into the Iroquois Theatre fire to rescue
her rubber overshoes was not a heroine. She merely lacked
imagination. Her mind was capable of appreciating how serious for
her would be the loss of her overshoes but not being burned alive. At
the battle of Velestinos, in the Greek-Turkish War, John F. Bass, of
The Chicago Daily News, and myself got into a trench at the foot of a
hill on which later the Greeks placed a battery. All day the Turks
bombarded this battery with a cross-fire of shrapnel and rifle-bullets
which did not touch our trench but cut off our return to Velestinos.
Sooner than pass through this crossfire, all day we crouched in the
trench until about sunset, when it came on to rain. We exclaimed with
dismay. We had neglected to bring our ponchos. "If we don't get back
to the village at once," we assured each other, "we will get wet!" So
we raced through half a mile of falling shells and bullets and, before
the rain fell, got under cover. Then Bass said: "For twelve hours we
stuck to that trench because we were afraid if we left it we would be
killed. And the only reason we ever did leave it was because we were
more afraid of catching cold!"
In the same war I was in a trench with some infantrymen, one of
whom never raised his head. Whenever he was ordered to fire he
would shove his rifle-barrel over the edge of the trench, shut his eyes,
and pull the trigger. He took no chances. His comrades laughed at
him and swore at him, but he would only grin sheepishly and burrow
deeper. After several hours a friend in another trench held up a bag
of tobacco and some cigarette-papers and in pantomime "dared" him
to come for them. To the intense surprise of every one he scrambled
out of our trench and, exposed against the sky-line, walked to the
other trench and, while he rolled a handful of cigarettes, drew the fire
of the enemy. It was not that he was brave; he had shown that he
was not. He was merely stupid. Between death and cigarettes, his
mind could not rise above cigarettes.
Why the same kind of people are so differently affected by danger is
very hard to understand. It is almost impossible to get a line on it. I
was in the city of Rheims for three days and two nights while it was
being bombarded. During that time fifty thousand people remained in
the city and, so far as the shells permitted, continued about their
business. The other fifty thousand fled from the city and camped out
along the road to Paris. For five miles outside Rheims they lined both
edges of that road like people waiting for a circus parade. With them
they brought rugs, blankets, and loaves of bread, and from daybreak
until night fell and the shells ceased to fall they sat in the hay-fields
and along the grass gutters of the road. Some of them were most
intelligent-looking and had the manner and clothes of the rich. There
was one family of five that on four different occasions on our way to
and from Paris we saw seated on the ground at a place certainly five
miles away from any spot where a shell had fallen. They were all in
deep mourning, but as they sat in the hay-field around a wicker tea
basket and wrapped in steamer-rugs they were comic. Their lives
were no more valuable than those of thousands of their fellow
townsfolk who in Rheims were carrying on the daily routine. These
kept the shops open or in the streets were assisting the Red Cross.
One elderly gentleman told me how he had been seized by the
Germans as a hostage and threatened with death by hanging. With
forty other first citizens, from the 4th to the 12th of September he had
been in jail. After such an experience one would have thought that
between himself and the Germans he would have placed as many
miles as possible, but instead he was strolling around the Place du
Parvis Notre-Dame, in front of the cathedral. For the French officers
who, on sightseeing bent, were motoring into Rheims from the battle
line he was acting as a sort of guide. Pointing with his umbrella, he
would say: "On the left is the new Palace of Justice, the façade
entirely destroyed; on the right you see the palace of the archbishop,
completely wrecked. The shells that just passed over us have
apparently fallen in the garden of the Hôtel Lion d'Or." He was as cool
as the conductor on a "Seeing Rheims" observation-car.
He was matched in coolness by our consul, William Bardel. The
American consulate is at No. 14 Rue Kellermann. That morning a
shell had hit the chestnut-tree in the garden of his neighbor, at No.
12, and had knocked all the chestnuts into the garden of the
consulate. "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," said Mr. Bardel.
In the bombarded city there was no rule as to how any one would act.
One house would be closed and barred, and the inmates would be
either in their own cellar or in the caves of the nearest champagne
company. To those latter they would bring books or playing-cards
and, among millions of dust-covered bottles, by candle-light, would
wait for the guns to cease. Their neighbors sat in their shops or stood
at the doors of their houses or paraded the streets. Past them their
friends were hastening, trembling with terror. Many women sat on the
front steps, knitting, and with interested eyes watched their
acquaintances fleeing toward the Paris gate. When overhead a shell
passed they would stroll, still knitting, out into the middle of the street
to see where the shell struck.
By the noise it was quite easy to follow the flight of the shells. You
were tricked by the sound into almost believing you could see them.
The six-inch shells passed with a whistling roar that was quite
terrifying. It was as though just above you invisible telegraph-wires
had jangled, and their rush through the air was like the roar that rises
to the car window when two express-trains going in opposite
directions pass at sixty miles an hour. When these sounds assailed
them the people flying from the city would scream. Some of them, as
though they had been hit, would fall on their knees. Others were
sobbing and praying aloud. The tears rolled down their cheeks. In
their terror there was nothing ludicrous; they were in as great physical
pain as were some of the hundreds in Rheims who had been hit. And
yet others of their fellow townsmen living in the same street, and with
the same allotment of brains and nerves, were treating the
bombardment with the indifference they would show to a summer
shower.
We had not expected to spend the night in Rheims, so, with
Ashmead Bartlett, the military expert of the London Daily Telegraph, I
went into a chemist's shop to buy some soap. The chemist, seeing I
was an American, became very much excited. He was overstocked
with an American shaving-soap, and he begged me to take it off his
hands. He would let me have it at what it cost him. He did not know
where he had placed it, and he was in great alarm lest we would
leave his shop before he could unload it on us. From both sides of
the town French artillery were firing in salvoes, the shocks shaking
the air; over the shop of the chemist shrapnel was whining, and in the
street the howitzer shells were opening up subways. But his mind
was intent only on finding that American shaving-soap. I was anxious
to get on to a more peaceful neighborhood. To French soap, to soap
"made in Germany," to neutral American soap I was indifferent. Had it
not been for the presence of Ashmead Bartlett I would have fled. To
die, even though clasping a cake of American soap, seemed less
attractive than to live unwashed. But the chemist had no time to
consider shells. He was intent only on getting rid of surplus stock.
The majority of people who are afraid are those who refuse to
consider the doctrine of chances. The chances of their being hit may
be one in ten thousand, but they disregard the odds in their favor and
fix their minds on that one chance against them. In their imagination it
grows larger and larger. It looms red and bloodshot, it hovers over
them; wherever they go it follows, menacing, threatening, filling them
with terror. In Rheims there were one hundred thousand people, and
by shells one thousand were killed or wounded. The chances against
were a hundred to one. Those who left the city undoubtedly thought
the odds were not good enough.
Those who on account of the bombs that fell from the German
aeroplanes into Paris left that city had no such excuse. The chance of
any one person being hit by a bomb was one in several millions. But
even with such generous odds in their favor, during the days the
bomb-dropping lasted many thousands fled. They were obsessed by
that one chance against them. In my hotel in Paris my landlady had
her mind fixed on that one chance, and regularly every afternoon
when the aeroplanes were expected she would go to bed. Just as
regularly her husband would take a pair of opera-glasses and in the
Rue de la Paix hopefully scan the sky.
One afternoon while we waited in front of Cook's an aeroplane sailed
overhead, but so far above us that no one knew whether it was a
French air-ship scouting or a German one preparing to launch a
bomb. A man from Cook's, one of the interpreters, with a horrible
knowledge of English, said: "Taube or not Taube; that is the
question." He was told he was inviting a worse death than from a
bomb. To illustrate the attitude of mind of the Parisian, there is the
story of the street gamin who for some time, from the Garden of the
Tuileries, had been watching a German aeroplane threatening the
city. Finally, he exclaimed impatiently:
"Oh, throw your bomb! You are keeping me from my dinner."
A soldier under fire furnishes few of the surprises of conduct to which
the civilian treats you. The soldier has no choice. He is tied by the leg,
and whether the chances are even or ridiculously in his favor he must
accept them. The civilian can always say, "This is no place for me,"
and get up and walk away. But the soldier cannot say that. He and
his officers, the Red Cross nurses, doctors, ambulance-bearers, and
even the correspondents have taken some kind of oath or signed
some kind of contract that makes it easier for them than for the
civilian to stay on the job. For them to go away would require more
courage than to remain.
Indeed, although courage is so highly regarded, it seems to be of all
virtues the most common. In six wars, among men of nearly every
race, color, religion, and training, I have seen but four men who failed
to show courage. I have seen men who were scared, sometimes
whole regiments, but they still fought on; and that is the highest
courage, for they were fighting both a real enemy and an imaginary
one.
There is a story of a certain politician general of our army who, under
a brisk fire, turned on one of his staff and cried:
"Why, major, you are scared, sir; you are scared!"
"I am," said the major, with his teeth chattering, "and if you were as
scared as I am you'd be twenty miles in the rear."
In this war the onslaughts have been so terrific and so unceasing, the
artillery fire especially has been so entirely beyond human
experience, that the men fight in a kind of daze. Instead of arousing
fear the tumult acts as an anaesthetic. With forests uprooted, houses
smashing about them, and unseen express-trains hurtling through
space, they are too stunned to be afraid. And in time they become
fed up on battles and to the noise and danger grow callous. On the
Aisne I saw an artillery battle that stretched for fifteen miles. Both
banks of the river were wrapped in smoke; from the shells villages
miles away were in flames, and two hundred yards in front of us the
howitzer shells were bursting in black fumes. To this the French
soldiers were completely indifferent. The hills they occupied had been
held that morning by the Germans, and the trenches and fields were
strewn with their accoutrement. So all the French soldiers who were
not serving the guns wandered about seeking souvenirs. They had
never a glance for the villages burning crimson in the bright sunight or
for the falling "Jack Johnsons."
They were intent only on finding a spiked helmet, and when they
came upon one they would give a shout of triumph and hold it up for
their comrades to see. And their comrades would laugh delightedly
and race toward them, stumbling over the furrows. They were as
happy and eager as children picking wild flowers.
It is not good for troops to sup entirely on horrors and also to
breakfast and lunch on them. So after in the trenches one regiment
has been pounded it is withdrawn for a day or two and kept in
reserve. The English Tommies spend this period of recuperating in
playing football and cards. When the English learned this they
forwarded so many thousands of packs of cards to the distributing
depot that the War Office had to request them not to send any more.
When the English officers are granted leave of absence they do not
waste their energy on football, but motor into Paris for a bath and
lunch. At eight they leave the trenches along the Aisne and by noon
arrive at Maxim's, Voisin's, or La Rue's. Seldom does warfare present
a sharper contrast. From a breakfast of "bully" beef, eaten from a tin
plate, with in their nostrils the smell of camp-fires, dead horses, and
unwashed bodies, they find themselves seated on red velvet
cushions, surrounded by mirrors and walls of white and gold, and
spread before them the most immaculate silver, linen, and glass. And
the odors that assail them are those of truffles, white wine, and
"artechant sauce mousseline."
It is a delight to hear them talk. The point of view of the English is so
sane and fair. In risking their legs or arms, or life itself, they see
nothing heroic, dramatic, or extraordinary. They talk of the war as
they would of a cricket-match or a day in the hunting-field. If things
are going wrong they do not whine or blame, nor when fortune smiles
are they unduly jubilant. And they are so appallingly honest and frank.
A piece of shrapnel had broken the arm of one of them, and we were
helping him to cut up his food and pour out his Scotch and soda.
Instead of making a hero or a martyr of himself, he said confidingly:
"You know, I had no right to be hit. If I had been minding my own
business I wouldn't have been hit. But Jimmie was having a hell of a
time on top of a hill, and I just ran up to have a look in. And the
beggars got me. Served me jolly well right. What?"
I met one subaltern at La Rue's who had been given so many
commissions by his brother officers to bring back tobacco, soap, and
underclothes that all his money save five francs was gone. He still
had two days' leave of absence, and, as he truly pointed out, in Paris
even in war time five francs will not carry you far. I offered to be his
banker, but he said he would first try elsewhere. The next day I met
him on the boulevards and asked what kind of a riotous existence he
found possible on five francs.
"I've had the most extraordinary luck," he said. "After I left you I met
my brother. He was just in from the front, and I got all his money."
"Won't your brother need it?" I asked.
"Not at all," said the subaltern cheerfully. "He's shot in the legs, and
they've put him to bed. Rotten luck for him, you might say, but how
lucky for me!"
Had he been the brother who was shot in both legs he would have
treated the matter just as light-heartedly.
One English major, before he reached his own firing-line, was hit by a
bursting shell in three places. While he was lying in the American
ambulance hospital at Neuilly the doctor said to him:
"This cot next to yours is the only one vacant. Would you object if we
put a German in it?"
"By no means," said the major; "I haven't seen one yet."
The stories the English officers told us at La Rue's and Maxim's by
contrast with the surroundings were all the more grewsome. Seeing
them there it did not seem possible that in a few hours these same fit,
sun-tanned youths in khaki would be back in the trenches, or
scouting in advance of them, or that only the day before they had
been dodging death and destroying their fellow men.
Maxim's, which now reminds one only of the last act of "The Merry
Widow," was the meeting-place for the French and English officers
from the front; the American military attachés from our embassy,
among whom were soldiers, sailors, aviators, marines; the doctors
and volunteer nurses from the American ambulance, and the
correspondents who by night dined in Paris and by day dodged arrest
and other things on the firing-line, or as near it as they could motor
without going to jail. For these Maxim's was the clearing-house for
news of friends and battles. Where once were the supper-girls and
the ladies of the gold-mesh vanity-bags now were only men in red
and blue uniforms, men in khaki, men in bandages. Among them
were English lords and French princes with titles that dated from
Agincourt to Waterloo, where their ancestors had met as enemies.
Now those who had succeeded them, as allies, were, over a sole
Marguery, discussing air-ships, armored automobiles, and
mitrailleuses.
At one table Arthur H. Frazier, of the American embassy, would be
telling an English officer that a captain of his regiment who was
supposed to have been killed at Courtrai had, like a homing pigeon,
found his way to the hospital at Neuilly and wanted to be reported
"safe" at Lloyds. At another table a French lieutenant would describe
a raid made by the son of an American banker in Paris who is in
command of an armed automobile. "He swept his gun only once--so,"
the Frenchman explained, waving his arm across the champagne
and the broiled lobster, "and he caught a general and two staff-
officers. He cut them in half." Or at another table you would listen to a
group of English officers talking in wonder of the Germans' wasteful
advance in solid formation.
"They were piled so high," one of them relates, "that I stopped firing.
They looked like gray worms squirming about in a bait-box. I can
shoot men coming at me on their feet, but not a mess of arms and
legs."
"I know," assents another; "when we charged the other day we had to
advance over the Germans that fell the night before, and my men
were slipping and stumbling all over the place. The bodies didn't give
them any foothold."
"My sergeant yesterday," another relates, "turned to me and said: 'It
isn't cricket. There's no game in shooting into a target as big as that.
It's just murder.' I had to order him to continue firing."
They tell of it without pose or emotion. It is all in the day's work. Most
of them are young men of wealth, of ancient family, cleanly bred
gentlemen of England, and as they nod and leave the restaurant we
know that in three hours, wrapped in a greatcoat, each will be
sleeping in the earth trenches, and that the next morning the shells
will wake him.