[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
It was just at the dawn of a March morning when I got off a train at
Gerbéviller, the little "Martyr City" that hides its desolation as it
hid its existence in the foothills of the Vosges.
There was a dense fog. At 6 A.M. fog usually covers the valleys of the
Meurthe and Moselle. From the station I could see only a building across
the road. A gendarme demanded my credentials. I handed him the
laisser-passer from the Quartier Général of the "First French Army,"
which controls all coming and going, all activity in that region. The
gendarme demanded to know the hour when I proposed to leave. I told him.
He said it would be necessary to have the permit "viséd for departure"
at the headquarters of the gendarmerie. He pointed to the hazy outlines
of another building just distinguishable through the fog.
This was proof that the town contained buildings--not just a building.
The place was not entirely destroyed, as I had supposed. I went down the
main street from the station, the fog enveloping me. I had letters to
the town officials, but it was too early in the morning to present them.
I would first get my own impressions of the wreck and the ruin. But I
could see nothing on either hand as I stumbled along in the mud. So I
commented to myself that this was not as bad as some places I had seen.
I thought of the substantial station and the buildings across the
road--untouched by war. I compared Gerbéviller with places where there
is not even a station--where not one simple house remains as the result
of "the day when the Germans came."
The road was winding and steep, dipping down to the swift little stream
that twists a turbulent passage through the town. The day was coming
fast but the fog remained white and impenetrable. After a few minutes I
began to see dark shapes on either side of the road. Tall, thin,
irregular shapes, some high, some low, but with outlines all softened,
toned down by the banks of white vapor.
I started across the road to investigate and fell into a pile of jagged
masonry on the sidewalk. Through the nearness of the fog I could see
tumbled piles of bricks. The shapes still remained--spectres that seemed
to move in the light wind from the valley. An odor that was not of the
freshness of the morning assailed me. I climbed across the walk. No wall
of buildings barred my path, but I mounted higher on the piles of brick
and stones. A heavy black shape was now at my left hand. I looked up and
in the shadow there was no fog. I could see a crumbled swaying side wall
of a house that was. The odor I noticed was that caused by fire.
Sticking from the wall I could see the charred wood joists that once
supported the floor of the second story. Higher, the lifting fog
permitted me to see the waving boughs of a tree that hung over the house
that was, outlined against a clear sky. At my feet, sticking out of the
pile of bricks and stones, was the twisted iron fragments that was once
the frame of a child's bed. I climbed out into the sunshine.
I was standing in the midst of a desolation and a silence that was
profound. There was nothing there that lived, except a few fire-blacked
trees that stuck up here and there in the shelter of broken walls. Now I
understood the meaning of the spectral shapes. They were nothing but the
broken walls of the other houses that were. They were all that remained
of nine-tenths of Gerbéviller.
I wandered along to where the street turned abruptly. There the ground
pitched more sharply to the little river. There stood an entire half of
a house unscathed by fire; it was one of those unexplainable freaks that
often occur in great catastrophes. Even the window glass was intact.
Smoke was coming from the chimney. I went to the opposite side and there
stood an old woman looking out toward the river, brooding over the ruin
stretching below her.
"You are lucky," I said. "You still have your home."
She threw out her hands and turned a toothless countenance toward me. I
judged her to be well over seventy. It wasn't her home, she explained.
Her home was "là-bas"--pointing vaguely in the distance. She had lived
there fifty years--now it was burned. Her son's house for which he had
saved thirty years to be able to call it his own, was also gone; but
then her son was dead, so what did it matter? Yes, he was shot on the
day the Germans came. He was ill, but they killed him. Oh, yes, she saw
him killed. When the Germans went away she came to this house and built
a fire in the stove. It was very cold.
And why were the houses burned? No; it was not the result of
bombardment. Gerbéviller was not bombarded until after the houses were
burned. They were burned by the Germans systematically. They went from
house to house with their torches and oil and pitch. They did not
explain why they burned the houses, but it was because they were angry.
The old woman paused a moment, and a faint flicker of a smile showed in
the wrinkles about her eyes. I asked her to continue her story.
"You said because they were angry," I prompted. The smile broadened. Oh,
yes, they were very angry, she explained. They did not even make the
excuse that the villagers fired upon them. They were just angry through
and through. And it was all because of those seventy-five French
chasseurs who held the bridge. Some one called to her from the house.
She hobbled to the door. "Anyone can tell you about the seventy-five
chasseurs," she said, disappearing within.
I went on down the road and stood upon the bridge over the swift little
river. It was a narrow little bridge only wide enough for one wagon to
pass. Two roads from the town converged there, the one over which I had
passed and another which formed a letter "V" at the juncture with the
bridge. Across the river only one road led away from the bridge and it
ran straight up a hill, when it turned suddenly into the broad national
highway to Lunéville about five miles away.
One house remained standing almost at the entrance to the bridge, at the
end nearest the town. Its roof was gone, and its walls bore the marks of
hundreds of bullets, but it was inhabited by a little old man of fifty,
who came out to talk with me. He was the village carpenter. His house
was burned, so he had taken refuge in the little house at the bridge.
During the time the Germans were there he had been a prisoner, but they
forgot him the morning the French army arrived. Everybody was in such a
hurry, he explained.
I asked him about the seventy-five chasseurs at the bridge. Ah, yes, we
were then standing on the site of their barricade. He would tell me
about it, for he had seen it all from his house half way up the hill.
The chasseurs were first posted across the river on the road to
Lunéville, and when the Germans approached, early in the morning, they
fell back to the bridge, which they had barricaded the night before. It
was the only way into Gerbéviller, so the chasseurs determined to fight.
They had torn up the street and thrown great earthworks across one end
of the bridge. Additional barricades were thrown up on the two
converging streets, part way up the hill, behind which they had
mitrailleuses which could sweep the road at the other end of the bridge.
About a half mile to the south a narrow footbridge crossed the river,
only wide enough for one man. It was a little rustic affair that ran
through the grounds of the Château de Gerbéviller that faced the river
only a few hundred yards below the main bridge. It was a very ancient
château, built in the twelfth century and restored in the seventeenth
century. It was a royal château of the Bourbons. In it once lived the
great François de Montmorency, Duc de Luxembourg and Marshal of France.
Now it belonged to the Marquise de Lamberty, a cousin of the King of
Spain.
I interrupted, for I wanted to hear about the chasseurs. I gave the
little old man a cigarette. He seized it eagerly--so eagerly that I also
handed him a cigar. He just sort of fondled that cigar for a moment and
then placed it in an inside pocket. It was a very cheap and very bad
French cigar, for I was in a part of the country that has never heard of
Havanas, but to the little old man it was something precious. "I will
keep it for Sunday," he said.
I then got him back to the seventy-five chasseurs. It was just eight
o'clock in the morning--a beautiful sunshiny morning--when the German
column appeared around the bend in the road which we could see across
the bridge, and which joined the highway from Lunéville. There were
twelve thousand in that first column. One hundred and fifty thousand
more came later. A band was playing "Deutschland über alles" and the men
were singing. The closely packed front ranks of infantry broke into the
goose step as they came in sight of the town. It was a wonderful sight;
the sun glistened on their helmets; they marched as though on parade
right down almost to the opposite end of the bridge.
Then came the command to halt. For a moment there was a complete
silence. The Germans, only a couple of hundred yards from the barricade,
seemed slowly to consider the situation. The Captain of the chasseurs,
from a shelter behind the very little house that is still standing--and
where his men up the two roads could see him--softly waved his hand.
Crack-crack-crack--crack-crack-crack-crack--crack-crack-crack! The
bullets from the mitrailleuses whistled across the bridge into the front
ranks of the "Deutchland über alles" singers, while the men behind the
bridge barricade began a deadly rifle fire.
Have you ever heard a mitrailleuse? It is just like a telegraph
instrument, with its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a
hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that
it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can
its operator reel out its hundred and sixty shots a minute.
On that morning at the Gerbéviller barricade, however, it went faster
than the telegraph. These men on the converging roads just shifted their
range slightly and poured bullets into the next ranks of infantry and so
on back along the line, until Germans were dropping by the dozen at the
sides of the little straight road. Then the column broke ranks wildly
and fled back into the shelter of the road from Lunéville.
A half hour later a detachment of cavalry suddenly rounded the corner
and charged straight for the barricade. The seventy-five were ready for
them. Some of them got half way across the bridge and then tumbled into
the river. Not one got back around the corner of the road to Lunéville.
There was another half hour of quiet, and then from the Lunéville road a
battery of artillery got into action. Their range was bad, so far as any
achievement against the seventy-five was concerned, so they turned their
attention to the château, which they could easily see from their
position across the river. The first shell struck the majestic tower of
the building and shattered it. The next smashed the roof, the third hit
the chapel--and so continued the bombardment until flames broke out to
complete the destruction.
Of course the Germans could not know that the château was empty, that
its owner was in Paris and both her sons fighting in the French Army.
But they had secured the military advantage of demolishing one of the
finest country houses in France, with its priceless tapestries, ancient
marbles and heirlooms of the Bourbons. A howl of German glee was heard
by the seventy-five chasseurs crouching behind their barricades. So
pleased were the invaders with their achievement, that next they bravely
swung out a battery into the road leading to the bridge, intending to
shell the barricades. The Captain of chasseurs again waved his hand.
Every man of the battery was killed before the guns were in position. It
took an entire company of infantry--half of them being killed in the
action--to haul those guns back into the Lunéville road, thus to clear
the way for another advance.
From then on until 1 o'clock in the afternoon there were three more
infantry attacks, all failing as lamentably as the first. The
seventy-five were holding off the 12,000. At the last attack they let
the Germans advance to the entrance of the bridge. They invited them
with taunts to "avancez." Then they poured in their deadly fire, and as
the Germans broke and fled they permitted themselves a cheer. Up to this
time not one chasseur was killed. Only four were wounded.
Shortly after 1 o'clock the German artillery wasted a few more shells on
the ruined château and the chasseurs could see a detachment crawling
along the river bank in the direction of the narrow footbridge that
crossed through the château park a half mile below. The Captain of the
chasseurs sent one man with a mitrailleuse to hold the bridge. He posted
himself in the shelter of a large tree at one end. In a few minutes
about fifty Germans appeared. They advanced cautiously on the bridge.
The chasseur let them get half way over before he raked them with his
fire. The water below ran red with blood.
The Germans retreated for help and made another attack an hour later
with the same result. By 4 o'clock, when the lone chasseur's ammunition
was exhausted, it is estimated that he had killed 175 Germans, who made
five desperate rushes to take the position, which would have enabled
them to make a flank attack on the seventy-four still holding the main
bridge. When his ammunition was gone--which occurred at the same time as
the ammunition at the main bridge was exhausted--this chasseur with the
others succeeded in effecting a retreat to a main body of cavalry. If he
still lives--this modern Horatius at the bridge--he remains an unnamed
hero in the ranks of the French Army, unhonored except in the hearts of
those few of his countrymen who know.
During the late hours of the afternoon aeroplanes flew over the
chasseurs' position, thus discovering to the Germans how really weak
were the defenses of the town, how few its defenders. Besides, the
ammunition was gone. But for eight hours--from 8 in the morning until 4
in the afternoon--the seventy-five had held the 12,000. General Joffre
has said in one of his reports that the defense of the bridge at
Gerbéviller had an important bearing on the battle of the Marne, which
was just beginning, for it gave Castelnau's Army of the East time to dig
its trenches a few miles back of Gerbéviller before the Germans got
through.
Had that body of 12,000 succeeded earlier the 150,000 Germans that
advanced the next day might have been able to fall on the French right
flank during the most critical and decisive battle of the war. The total
casualties of the chasseurs were three killed, three captured, and six
wounded.
The little old man and I had walked to the entrance of the château park
before he finished his story. It was still too early for breakfast. I
thanked him and told him to return to his work in the little house by
the bridge. I wanted to explore the château at leisure.
I entered the place--what was left of it. Most of the walls were
standing. Walls built in the twelfth century do not break easily, even
with modern artillery. But the modern roof and seventeenth century inner
walls were all demolished. Not a single article of furniture or
decoration remained. But the destruction showed some of the same
freaks--similar to that little house left untouched by fire on the
summit of the hill.
For instance, the Bourbon coat of arms above the grand staircase was
untouched, while the staircase itself was just splintered bits of
marble. On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent
stag's antlers. Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases
that had been priceless. Even the remnants were valuable. In the ruined
music room I found a piece of fresh, clean music, (an Alsatian waltz,)
lying on the mantelpiece. I went out to the front of the building, where
the great park sweeps down to the edge of the river. An old gardener in
one of the side paths saw me. We immediately established cordial
relations with a cigarette.
He told me how, after the chasseurs retreated beyond the town, the
Germans--reduced over a thousand of their original number by the
activities of the day--swept over the barricades of the bridge and into
the town. Yes, the old woman I had talked with was right about it. They
were very angry. They were ferociously angry at being held eight hours
at that bridge by a force so ridiculously small.
The first civilians they met they killed, and then they began to fire
the houses. One young man, half witted, came out of one of the houses
near the bridge. They hanged him in the garden behind the house. Then
they called his mother to see. A mob came piling into the château headed
by four officers. All the furniture and valuables that were not
destroyed they piled into a wagon and sent back to Lunéville. Of the
gardener who was telling me the story they demanded the keys of the wine
cellars. No; they did not injure him. They just held him by the arms
while several dozen of the soldiers spat in his face.
While the drunken crew were reeling about the place, one of them
accidentally stumbled upon the secret underground passage leading to the
famous grottoes. These grottoes and the underground connection from the
château were built in the fifteenth century. They are a half mile away,
situated only half above ground, the entrance looking out on a smooth
lawn that extends to the edge of the river. Several giant trees, the
trunks of which are covered with vines, semi-shelter the entrance, which
is also obscured by climbing ivy. The interior was one of the treasures
of France. The vaulted ceilings were done in wonderful mosaic. The walls
decorated with marbles and rare sea shells. In every nook were marble
pedestals and antique statuary, while the fountain in the centre,
supplied from an underground stream, was of porphyry inlaid with mosaic.
The Germans looked upon it with appreciative eyes and cultured minds.
But it did not please them. They were still very angry. Its destruction
was a necessity of war. It could not be destroyed by artillery because
it was half underground and screened by the giant trees. But it could be
destroyed by picks and axes. A squad of soldiers was detailed to the
job. They did it thoroughly. The gardener took me there to see. Not a
scrap of the mosaic remained. The fountain was smashed to bits. A
headless Venus and a smashed and battered Adonis were lying prone upon
the ground.
The visitors to the château and environs afterward joined their comrades
in firing the town. Night had come. Also across the bridge waited the
hundred and fifty thousand reinforcements come from Lunéville. The five
hundred of the two thousand inhabitants who remained were herded to the
upper end of the town near the station. That portion was not to be
destroyed because the German General would make his headquarters there.
The inhabitants were to be given a treat. They were to witness the
entrance of the hundred and fifty thousand--the power and might of
Germany was to be exhibited to them. So while the flames leaped high
from the burning city, reddening the sky for miles, while old men
prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of
martial music was heard down the street near the bridge. The infantry
packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their
helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the
station--the great German army had entered the city of Gerbéviller with
the honors of war.