OUTPOST LIFE
In front of Croane, where, in 1814, Frank and Hun fought for mastery,
one hundred years later, the same nations again battled.
The elaborate, naturally drained trench system of to-day was not.
Instead of the horizon blue, the French soldier wore the old red
pantaloons and dark blue coat. Occasionally new blue uniforms were sent
to the front, which, wet a couple of times—the new dyes not
holding—quickly become drab. Torn clothes, ripped, crawling through
barbed wire, are held together by finer wires. New York Heralds and
Daily Mails wrapped around socks to help keep in the heat, warm not
alone the cockles of the heart, but the soles of the feet. No smoking
cook-kitchen, with steaming kettles filled with tasty food followed our
ranks on march. Soup dishes and kettles are carried on knapsack, as in
the days of Napoleon. At the end of a long march, at bivouac time, if
the commissary has not made connection weary soldiers throw their
kettles away. If caught, eight days in prison, they welcome as relief.
The Germans held Croane—the French and Germans, alternately, occupied
the village of Croanelle, dominated by the fortress of Croane. This was
before the days of the present heavy bombardment, and many of the
deserted houses were still intact, beds unmade, dishes yet upon table,
furnished, but vacant. Cattle, tied to mangers, lay dead in their stabs.
In cellars, where combatants had tunneled through to connect, the dead
of both sides lay impaled on bayonets. One Frenchman’s teeth were at a
German’s throat, locked in combat, even in death.
Out between the lines lay the unburied dead, in all shapes and
conditions of rot, settled in the mud, half buried in open shell holes.
Dried fragments of uniforms flapped on barbed wire through which the
wounded had crawled into sheltered corners and died. No need to tell a
patrol when, in winter darkness, as he stepped on a slippery substance,
what it was—he knew. In the spring grass grew around and through these
inanimate shapes. Rats and dogs waxed fat as badgers.
[Illustration]
From the day the 2d Regiment went into Croanelle till it was relieved,
six months later, no German soldier who set foot in the shallow trench
went back. Our regiment, repeatedly reinforced, was kept at full
strength.
[Illustration:
UNITED STATES CONGRESSIONAL
MEDAL
(Reverse side reads)
FOR
PATRIOTISM
FORTITUDE
AND
LOYALTY
]
Americans there endured pain and suffering, the depth of which
Washington’s Army at Valley Forge never reached. Those old Continentals
had nothing in discomfort on these modern heroes in front of Croane.
Washington’s Army, in their own country, had access to the necessities
of life. They held communion with their fellows. These later-day
Americans, under the hardest discipline in the world, were cut off from
civilization. They were back to the age of barter and exchange. Money
would not buy goods—there was nothing to be bought—but if one man had a
little tobacco, and another man a pair of socks, they would swap.
No furloughs were granted the first ten months. Every letter was
censored. Packages of comforts, sent by friends, were stolen or
confiscated en route. They were in a foreign country, whose language
many could not speak. They had left good, comfortable homes for these
holes in the ground, called trenches by courtesy, where one waded to his
post on guard, rifle in hand, and carried a wisp of straw or a piece of
plank on which to lie to keep from sinking into slime and slush, which
covered his clothes with mud and filled his bones with rheumatism.
It was near midnight, the relief was in the basement of a shot-up
chateau. The guard, on a scaffold, peering through loopholes made in a
stone wall, was watching Rockwell sentinel at the advance output and
alongside. They saw him stop, heard a familiar sound (the striking of a
grenade cap), but it was in the rear. Suddenly Rockwell yelled, “Aux
Armes.” Metteger, the burly Alsatian corporal, ran out, just in time to
catch the explosion of a German grenade, and was killed. Rockwell,
standing between the grenade and the corporal, was so thin the charge
missed him and lodged in the fat man. Simultaneously, the guard at the
wall heard a rush, a noise, a rattle of musketry from behind, and turned
about face. The relief rushed out of the basement. The Germans, caught
between two fires; cursing, disappeared into the darkness.
When the guard turned to repel the attackers, they jumped from the
scaffold to the ground. Capdeville’s hair was singed by a bullet, a ball
went through Soubiron’s cartridge belt. When Brooks, the cockney
Englishman, jumped, another Englishman, Buchanan, fell on him, pushed
his face into the ground and filled his mouth with mud. Brooks struck
out and hit Buchanan, who tried to get away to chase the Boche. “You
blankety, blank, blank.” Biff! biff! biff! “You will, will you?” The two
Englishmen were still fighting when the guard came back. Buchanan had
discovered that some one had made his gun unworkable, tramping mud into
the magazine. He stopped and had it out with Brooks.
It was at La Fontenelle and Ban de Sapt, La Viola and Viola Nord,
opposite St. Marie aux Mines, in reconquered Alsace, among the Vosges on
the Franco-German frontier. Seven long, weary months we spent among
those perpendicular mountains, with sunburned base and snowy, dripping
tops. Dog trains carried provisions in winter. Pack mules clamber in
summer, wearing breeching to keep from slipping down hill.
The continuous snows of winter, and the ceaseless flow of water down the
middle of the trench in summer, while it also dripped from the roof of
the dugout, and seeped up from the ground below, dampened both clothes
and spirits, as we carried wet blankets and our misery about, up among
the clouds of mist, in drizzles, sleet, snow and the intense cold. A
sieve was a water-tight compartment compared to those shut-up dugouts.
The constant bombardment often changed so completely the topography of
the mountains, one could hardly be sure when daylight came that he was
the same man, or in the same place, as he was the night before.
We were beyond civilization. Not a flower, a garden, a cow, a chicken, a
house with a door or window, or roof, not a civilian or a woman was to
be seen. All work or fight, no recreation, it was a long, continued
suffering. We had the Boche part of the time, bad weather all the time.
The trenches were so close together we fought with grenades instead of
rifles. The wire in front, thrown out loose from the trench behind, was
all shot up. The trench itself from continued bombardment was thirty or
forty feet across the top, with just a narrow path down the middle,
where one walked below the ground level. The hills were a wilderness of
craters, blown out trenches with unexploded shells about.
Crosses leaning over dead men’s graves, were littered with ragged, empty
sandbags, while pieces of splintered timber, tangled wire, mingled with
broken boulders and lacerated tree trunks of all lengths and thickness.
Holes grew now where trees had stood. Roots and stumps, upturned,
replaced splintered branches and scorched, withered leaves. A few
straggling, upright trunks, eighty to one hundred feet in the air, were
festooned with sections of blown-up barbed wire.
The towns belonged to the dead, wholly deserted by civilians, with even
the old women gone. Roofless, doorless, windowless ruins, twisted iron
girders and fantastically broken walls, stood out against the sky,
grimly eloquent, though silent, monuments of kultur.
Face to face with death, what is in a man comes out. I shall never
forget one, who, right name unknown, came from Marseilles. We used to
call him “Coquin de Dieu.” He had some system whereby he got extra
wine—even at the front. That additional cup or two was just enough to
make him happy and start him singing. Handsome as a woman, he looked the
careless, reckless ne’er-do-well. During a terrific bombardment, I was
sent to relieve him, out between two German outposts, one eight, the
other fifteen yards away. Instead of going to the safety of the sap in
the rear, that Frenchman insisted on staying with me. Germans broke into
the French trench at the adjoining post, and went to the right. Had they
come left, we would have been the first victims.
There was little Maurice, just twenty, who had been through the whole
campaign. When dodging shells, he could drop quicker than a flapper and
come up laughing every time.
Maribeau, eighteen, only a boy, always objected to throwing grenades.
“No, I won’t—I promised my mother and my father I would not become a
grenadier and I won’t.” One night during a Boche grenade attack, he and
everyone else had to work for self-preservation. He liked it and became
a splendid bomb thrower.
Was with Renaud, an old 170th boy, and Marti, on post, during a Boche
bombardment and attack. Marti was killed by a grenade. A crapouillot
fell into the trench behind. I was pretty busy throwing grenades, but
caught a glimpse of a stray sergeant pulling Renaud under cover. Several
days later, noticing a haversack hanging on the side of the trench, I
wondered why it was there so long, also whose it might be. Inside was a
piece of bread and a flat tin plate perforated by shell and splinters.
Scribbled on the plate was the name, “Renaud.”
Big, strong, impulsive, was my marching companion, Peraud. He loved his
wife and hated war. When thinking about war his face had so deadly an
expression, no one dared disturb him. When his thought was of his wife,
he looked a glorified choir boy. Once in Lorraine, during repose, he and
his companion, Perora, a theological student, invited me to a church to
hear the curé lecture on Jeanne d’Arc. While the student and the curé
conversed, Peraud rang the bell which brought the soldier congregation.
Marching behind him, Indian file, through the trenches one dark night, I
missed the barrel of his rifle against the sky line, and stopped just in
time to prevent falling on top of Peraud, who had stumbled into a sap
filled with the slush and slime that run from the trench bottoms. It
wasn’t necessary to watch the rifle after that. I could follow by the
smell.
It was in the trenches I first met him. Boche bombardment had knocked
out the wooden posts that braced the sides of the trench. Dirt had
fallen in and dammed the running water. We were detailed to walk, knee
deep, into the horrible slush, and bring those dirty, dripping posts, on
our shoulders, to dry land. Suddenly he stopped, took a look and asked:
“Comrade, what was your business in civil life?” “I was engaged in
commerce. And you?” “Me? I am an artist.”
Our sergeant spoke a little English. He was a good sort, who, owning a
garage in civil life, had met many Americans and thought they were
decent enough to invite acquaintance. One afternoon, during a
bombardment, he, Peraud, Perora, Rolfe and Tardy were in a sap. Too
careless to go below, they stood on the top step, in the doorway,
sheltered from behind and on both sides. There was just the four-foot
square opening in front. A shell dropped into that opening, killed four,
and left Tardy standing alone. He was a brave soldier before, but no
good after that.
Peraud and Perora had been bosom friends. They came from the same
neighborhood, were wounded and sent to the same hospital, both changed
into the 163d Regiment. Together they were killed by the same shell.
Comrade Deporte was an old 170th man. Names, being indexed
alphabetically, always, at the end of a long march, Bowe and Deporte
were put on guard, with no chance to cool off after packing the heavy
sacks up the mountain side. Our cotton shirts, soaked with perspiration,
felt like a board as the body rapidly cooled during the silent,
motionless guard.
Deporte was a revelation in human nature. Unselfish, he did the most
arduous and often unnecessary work without a murmur. We were always
together on guard and frequently drew the bad places. Once, during a
five-hour bombardment, isolated, impossible to get relief to us, he did
not complain. Another time, hearing a suspicious noise in front, I threw
a grenade. We got such an avalanche in return it almost took our breath
away—and Deporte laughed! Home on furlough, he overstayed his leave five
days and drew sixty days prison. He smiled—it was sixty days on paper!
One fine day we two were taken out in front during a bombardment.
Captain Anglelli, with two holes in his helmet where a sniper’s bullet
went in and out at Verdun, explained the situation to Deporte:
“You have the grenades?”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“You see this hill?”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“It is higher than that trench.”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“You can throw into there?”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“The Boche will come through there.”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“You can hit him, he cannot reach you.”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“The American will stay with you?”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“Bomb hell out of them!”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
“Hold them there and we will bag them.”
“Oui, mon capitaine.”
Smiling, the captain patted Deporte on the shoulder. Deporte, looking
squarely into his eyes, grinned back. They understood each other, those
two. It was not superior ordering inferior. It was man to man.
I should like to tell all that happened that afternoon. It was the
wind-up of a week’s bombardment, and we had a ripping time dodging about
to avoid being maimed for life. We held a mountain top on the frontier.
The Germans had the peaks opposite, where they had planted their heavy
artillery. When the French drove back the invading Germans, the lines
stopped within bombing distance—about thirty yards. We had the upper
line, they the lower. We could throw grenades on them, but it was hard
for them to reach us. So they planted their line with trench-mortars
that throw aerial torpedoes, crapouillots and bombs the size of a
stovepipe, also others which resemble a two-gallon demijohn. They came
slow. We could see them—the wide-nosed torpedoes coming direct, the
stovepipes hurtling end over end.
These visible shells are only good for short range. We dodged them, but
they kept us constantly on the move. The captain’s trench was flattened
out—no need to watch that any more. The bombardment increased. Long
range artillery from the mountains joined the short range mortars. The
black smoke and noise from the Jack Johnsons and the yellow smoke from
bursting shrapnel did not attract our attention from those three-finned
torpedoes and hurtling crapouillots.
We would dodge for one but a half dozen might drop before we could look
around. Deporte was buried by one explosion. I had to pull him out of
the dirt. A big rock came flying down the trench, then a piece of timber
four feet long. Two pieces of metal fell on my helmet which I picked up
and have yet. They were burning hot, not iron or steel, but copper and
nickel.
At a shout in front, we grabbed grenades and saw to the left a crowd of
men running toward our lines, French and German. Later we learned how
eighteen Frenchmen went over to the German blockhouse across the way,
gave the forty occupants a chance to surrender, of which eleven took
advantage. Revolvers and bombs finished the others. Two Frenchmen, both
my friends, were wounded.
The Germans did not seem to like it. They got more angry and threw all
kinds of metal at our dodging heads. An orderly rushed around the corner
and yelled: “Fall back, orders from the capitaine.” He scurried away. We
found a sap. I was thirty feet down when I looked up and saw Deporte
standing at the opening unbuttoning his vest. Steam and perspiration
formed a circle around him, such as is seen about an aeroplane flying
high against the sun. About thirty feet down into that sap the steps
turned a right angle, then again changed direction. We sat beyond the
second turning, lighting a candle as fast as the inrush of air, made by
the bursting shells, blew it out. A couple of hours later, when we
looked for the hill we had held, it was gone. Immense craters yawned
where had been our regular trenches. The rows of trenches were as waves
of an angry sea, while the ground between was pitted and scarred beyond
recognition.