THE DEAD VILLAGE
It was grey noon and we found ourselves on a flat-backed bluff that
rose from the marshes of the Somme. At the base of this bluff could
be seen many openings, telling of the Germans who had once dug into
the place, fashioning little homes in the wet clay. The German is a
burrowing animal and it is safe to say that for every shell left by
him in his flight across the Somme (and they are many) he has left
a corresponding dug-out. These carefully constructed shelters are
to be seen in all localities, in trench, gully, bank, by roadway,
churchyard and farm. His dug-outs are everywhere, heavily timbered,
strongly propped, snugly roofed. In the building of these habitations
of fear the German soldier has no equal. The Australian soldier may
have more dash and energy in fighting than the Boche, the English
soldier more pluck and resource, the Scot more stubbornness, but none
of them can fashion better dug-outs than the German. Whether the
building is to him an art, profession, or instinct, the fact remains
that his manifest ability in building is a thing of wonder.
Most of his dug-outs are furnished with due elegance, from the
carpeted and curtained abodes of officers, to the snug hutments of
the simple soldiers. The officers' chairs are covered with elegant
brocade, the officers' tables are of carved oak, and here and there
the officers' rooms are lined with rich tapestry. And all has been
taken from the homes of France, from the château, church and cottage.
Round the bluff on which I stood and as far away as the eye reached
could be seen innumerable brick red huddles, all that was left of the
villages which once stood on the Somme field, all that now remains
are stumps of walls, broken-down churches, smashed doors, paneless
windows, desolation and ruin. At points on the immense landscape
can be seen black blocks of enemy hutments which have in a measure
escaped the ravages of war. Gun positions can even be located,
the guns idle in their emplacements, howitzers knocked off their
mountings, gun carriages stuck in the mud, lines of the everlasting
wire entanglements stretching over miles and miles of fields. Here
and there is a signpost with German directions telling where such and
such a place can be found and where such and such a road is leading
to. The village of A---- lies some distance in front, the village of
B---- some distance to rear, and both heaps of ruins.
Each ruined village has an aspect peculiarly its own. Each seems to
view its evil hap in its own way and the traveller becomes conscious
of a distinct soul in each huddle of ruins.
Villers-Bretonneux with many walls standing and projecting beams
and girders rising over the rubbish seems to groan out: "Though I
am smashed and broken I am not yet beaten. They've tried to work
their will on me, but for all that here I stand battle-scarred but
indomitable. I have a soul that still remains my own."
Bray-sur-Somme, resting in a hollow, solitary and secluded, with
its church spire down, the Christ above the church door lacerated
with shrapnel splinters, and the green grass peeping covertly up
from the cracks in the pavement, wears the air of a hermit who has
cast himself off from the sin and temptation of the world. In it and
around it all is quiet. Not a sound, not a whisper. It seemed to me
as our party motored through there one day on our way to Chingnes,
that something personal stood above it, the Spirit of the village,
holding up its hand saying in a whisper: "Hush! Begone!" The village
detached and alone reminded me of a jungle animal in pain that creeps
into a dark corner to lick its sores. The life which disturbed the
repose of Bray-sur-Somme, if only for a moment, was to it a sinful
reproach; every movement, every voice and footfall seemed to throw it
back to brood on its own misery.
Again there is the village that has left nothing but a memory, a
village like Villars-Carbonnel, utterly dead, defaced off the world
as writing is wiped off a slate, as the snow is thawed from a garden
seat. Nothing remains of it, not a café sign, not a cobble or a butt
of wall. A sign that I have already spoken of stands there telling
that it marked the place where once stood Villars-Carbonnel, which
is now as dead as the people of yesteryear. Poor little village!
there are tears in its story, tears for the idle onlooker as well as
for the refugees who will some day return to know the fate of their
native place.
In a steep gully in Arey Wood, south of the village of Chingnes, we
were shown a monster gun, with a bore of fifteen inches and a barrel
fifty feet in length. The huge machinery of the mounting, its steel
platform embedded in concrete was sunk into a deep pit surrounded by
blackened and shivered trees. Three light railway lines ran up to the
emplacement, and dug-outs for the gun crew, partially completed, were
ranged round the base of the pit.
But the gun was smashed, broken at the breech, with the helpless
barrel lying in the mud and the gun carriage standing helpless on its
steel platform. Thus it was found by the men of the 1st Australian
Division when they came forward on the heels of the retreating
Germans in the early days of last August.
The shaping of this gun was certainly one of the most magnificent
struggles of man against the forces of Nature, the moulding of the
earth to his needs and the fashioning of it towards a desired end.
As you look at it, you can picture the men who went down into the
bowels of the earth, dug and scraped the iron ore which they sent
up from the blackness of eternal night to the light of day. Then
followed the moment when overburdened vehicles swept towards some
busy centre of labour, where the ore was shovelled into the smelting
pots. Men sweated and strained there, worked hard in overheated
chambers, hurrying on the job which they had set out to do.
And others, wise in their lore, pondered over plans relating to this
and that, elevation of the monster when in use, the trajectory of
the missiles which it was to vomit forth, the absorption of recoil
and the carriage of the weapon to its desired emplacement. And these
things were studied and made plain while the munition worker in the
hot suffocating atmosphere of the casting room laboured to make
shells worthy of the gun.
And one day when the labour was accomplished, the weapon was sent
forth in secrecy and placed in a tree-lined pocket of ground behind
the German trenches. Here was an emplacement prepared fit for its
installation, and on a movable carriage, a steel ribbed structure
of gigantic proportions, the gun was placed, its fifty foot barrel
rising to the sky.
Dynamos built in deep dug-outs waited, ready when the hour came to
touch the spark that would send out the missile of death to some far
off French town, Amiens perhaps, and wreak vengeance on the simple
people who dwelt there.
Whether or not the shell was fired is a matter of doubt, but rumour
has it that a shell never passed through the barrel of the gun. But
still it had its toll of victims, for by the emplacement can now be
seen fourteen graves and the crosses on these graves tell that the
men buried there are German gunners. The shell bursting in the barrel
of the gun served a purpose, and this was beneficial to the Allies.
Some day when the war comes to an end, report has it that the gun
will be sent to Australia, where sightseers in Sydney or Melbourne
will look with awe on the mighty weapon captured by the Diggers in
the great struggle.
Of this matter I spoke to an Australian soldier in London the other
day, but he shook his head.
"You don't think they'll be able to remove it?" I queried.
"It's not that," he said. "It may be taken to Australia, but to what
city? One place is jealous of another, and if Sydney gets the gun,
what is Melbourne going to say? For my own part, I think it would be
wise to leave the gun where it is."
THE GRAVE
The cross is twined with gossamer,
The cross some hand has shaped with care,
But by his grave the grasses stir
And he is silent, sleeping there.
The guns are loud; he hears them not:
The night goes by; he does not know:
A lone white cross stands on the spot
And tells of one who sleeps below.
The brooding night is hushed and still,
The crooning breeze draws quiet breath:
A star-shell flares upon the hill
And lights the lowly house of death.
Unknown, a soldier slumbers there
While mournful mists come drooping low--
But oh! a weary maiden's prayer,
And oh! a mother's tears of woe!