[From The London Daily Mail, March 24, 1915.]
At the kind invitation of General Longchamps, German Military Governor
of the Province of Namur, I spent two days with him going along the
country in and behind the firing line in Northern France from near
Rheims to the small village of Monthois, near Vouziers, on the Aisne.
About five miles out of Monthois we came to the artillery positions of
the Germans. We could see the flashes of the guns long before we reached
the hills where they were placed, but when we came up and dismounted the
position was most cleverly concealed by a higher hill in front and the
heavy woods which served as a screen for the artillery. I noticed many
holes where the French shells had burst, and the valley to the north
looked as if some one had been experimenting with a well digger. One
21-centimeter shell had cut a swath about 100 yards long out of the
woods on the hill where we dismounted. The trees were twisted from their
stumps as if a small cyclone had passed, and one could realize the
damage the shells could do merely by the displaced air.
We went on forward into the valley on foot and stopped about two hundred
yards in front and to the left of where the German guns were firing.
There, although of course we could not see the French position, we could
hear and see their shells as they exploded. They were firing short, one
of the officers told me, because they thought the Germans were on the
forward hill. He could see one of the French aeroplanes directing their
fire, but I could not make it out. We stayed there listening to the
shells and watching the few movements of German batteries that were
taking place. A party of officers hidden by the trees were taking
observations and telephoning the results of the German fire and, no
doubt, of the French fire in the German trenches. There was no
excitement; but for the noise the whole scene reminded me of some kind
of construction work, such as building a railroad.
After about an hour, when nothing had happened, one began to realize
that even such excitement may become monotonous and be taken as a matter
of course. One of the officers told me that the Germans had been there
since the beginning of October and that even the trenches were in the
same position as when they first came.
Certainly the trenches seem permanent enough for spending many Winters.
A number of them have now been built of concrete, especially in that
swampy part near the Aisne where they strike water about three feet
underground. The difficulty is in draining out the water when it rains.
Some of the trenches have two stories, and at the back of many of them
are subterranean rest houses built of concrete and connected with the
trenches by passages. The rooms are about seven feet high and ten feet
square, and above the ground all evidence of the work is concealed by
green boughs and shrubbery so that they may escape the attention of the
enemy's aeroplanes.
With the noise and the fatigue, the men say it is impossible to sleep
naturally, but they become so used to the firing and so weary that they
become oblivious of everything even when shells are falling within a
dozen yards of them. They stay in the trenches five days and then get
five days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them
of a curious sort of fatalism--they have been lucky so far and will come
through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great
game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of
winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side
by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the sight of
agony and death.
We talked to some of the little groups of men along the road who were
going back to their five days in the trenches. Of course all large units
are split up so as not to attract attention. They were all the same, all
sure of winning, and all bearded, muddy, and determined. I could not
help thinking of American football players at the end of the first half.
These men seemed all the same. I have no recollection of a single
individual. The "system" and its work has made a type not only of
clothes but of face. Their answers to the usual questions were all the
same, and one felt in talking to them that their opinions were
machine-made. Three points stood out--Germany is right and will win;
England is wrong and will knuckle under; we hate England because we are
alike in religion, custom, and opinion, and it is the war of kindred
races. Everywhere one met the arguments and stories of unfairness and
cruelty in fighting that have appeared in the English papers, but with
the names reversed. English soldiers had surrendered and then fired; had
shot from beneath a Red Cross flag or had killed prisoners. The stories
were simple and as hackneyed as most of those current in England.
The concrete rest houses were interesting. Most of them have furniture
made from trees "to amuse us and pass the time." Both officers and men
use the same type of house, though discipline forbids that the same
house be used by both officers and men. The light in these houses is bad
and the ventilation not all that it should be, but they are extremely
careful about sanitation, and everywhere one smells disinfectants and
sees evidence of scrupulous guarding against disease. Oil and candles
are scarce and the "pocket electric" that all the men and officers carry
does not last long enough for much reading. There are always telephone
connections, but in most cases visits are impossible save by way of the
underground passages and the trenches.
One officer described the life as entirely normal; another said, in
speaking of a Louis XV. couch which had been borrowed from a near-by
château and was the pride of a regiment, "Oh! we are cave-dwellers, but
we have some of the luxuries of at least the nineteenth century."
The Major Commandant at Rethel showed me a letter from a friend
demanding "some easy chairs and a piano for his trench house," and the
Major said, "I hear they have music up on the Yser, but the French are
too close to us here!"
All that I saw of the German Red Cross leads me to believe that it is
adequate and efficient. At Rethel we saw a Red Cross train of thirty-two
cars perfectly equipped. The cars are made specially with open
corridors, so that stretchers or rubber-wheeled trucks may be rolled
from one car to another. The berths are in two tiers, much like an
American sleeping car, and each car when full holds twenty-eight men.
There is an operating car fully equipped for the most delicate and
dangerous cases; in fact, when we saw the train at Rethel it had stopped
on its way to Germany for an operation on a man's brain.