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WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE
by
SHERWOOD EDDY
Author of "Suffering and the War," "The Students of Asia," etc.
[Frontispiece: The American Y.M.C.A. Headquarters in Paris.]
Association Press
New York: 124 East 28Th Street
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
The International Committee of
Young Men's Christian Association
To M. H. E.
AND THE REAL HEROES OF THE WAR
THE MOTHERS WHO HAVE GIVEN THEIR SONS
AND THE WIVES WHO HAVE GIVEN THEIR HUSBANDS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
FOREWORD
I. AT THE FRONT
II. WITH GENERAL PERSHING'S FORCE IN FRANCE
III. A DAY IN THE "BULL RING"
IV. WITH THE BRITISH ARMY
V. LIFE IN A BASE CAMP
VI. THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS
VII. RELIGION AT THE FRONT
VIII. THE WORLD AT WAR
ILLUSTRATIONS
The American Y.M.C.A. Headquarters in Paris . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
The "Eagle Hut" in London
Harry Lauder Singing at a Y.M.C.A. Meeting. The officer
seated at the extreme right is Captain "Peg"
Wholesome and Entertaining,
Home Refreshments in London
Three Thousand Soldiers in the Crowded Hut
FOREWORD
The world is at war. Already more than a score of nations,
representing a population of over a thousand millions, or two-thirds of
the entire human race, are engaged in a life-and-death struggle on the
bloody battlefields of Europe, Asia, and Africa. No man can stand in
the mouth of that volcano on a battle front, or meet the trains pouring
in with their weary freight of wounded after a battle, or stand by the
operating tables and the long rows of cots in the hospitals, or share
in sympathy the hardship and suffering of the men who are fighting for
us, and remain unmoved. The man must be dead of soul to whom the war
does not present a mighty moral challenge. It arraigns our past manner
of life and our very civilization. It gives us a new angle of
observation, a new point of view, a new test of values. It furnishes a
possible moral judgment by which we can weigh our life in the balance
and see where we have been found wanting.
These brief sketches are only fragmentary and have of necessity been
hastily written. The writer has been asked to state his impression of
the work among the men in France. He did not go there to write but to
work. He has tried simply to state what he saw and to leave the reader
to draw his own conclusions. A mere statement of the grim facts at the
front, if they are not sugar-coated or glossed over, may not be
pleasant reading, but it is unfair to those at home that they should
not know the hard truth of the reality of things as they are.
Before the war broke out, it was the writer's privilege to make an
extended tour for work among students in Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria,
Serbia, and Greece, and to visit Germany. Since the declaration of
war, he has visited France, Italy, and Egypt, and has observed the
effect of the war throughout Asia, in tours extending over nearly the
whole of China and India. Last year he was in the British camps among
the soldiers of England, Scotland, and Wales. Since America declared
war he has been working with the various divisions of the British and
American armies in France, from the great base camps, where hundreds of
thousands of men are in training, up to the front with the men in the
trenches.
For the sake of those who will follow with deep interest the boys who
are already in France, or who will shortly be there, brief accounts are
given of the various phases of a soldier's life in the base camps, the
training school of the "Bull Ring," at the front, and in the hospitals.
CHAPTER I
AT THE FRONT
In the midst of our work at a base camp, there came a sudden call to go
"up the line" to the great battle front. Leaving the railway, we took
a motor and pressed on over the solidly paved roads of France, which
are now pulsing arteries of traffic, crowded with trains of motor
transports pouring in their steady stream of supplies for the men and
munitions for the guns. Now we turn out for the rumbling tank-like
caterpillars, which slowly creep forward, drawing the big guns up to
the front; then we pass a light field-battery. Next comes a battalion
of Tommies swinging down the road, loaded like Christmas trees with
their cumbrous kits, sweating, singing, whistling, as they march by
with dogged cheer toward the trenches.
We have crossed the Somme with its memories of blood, on across
northern France, and now we have passed the Belgian frontier and are in
the historic fields of Flanders, where the creaking windmills are still
grinding the peasants' corn, and the little church spires stand guard
over the sleeping villages. A turn of the road brings us close within
sound of the guns, which by night are heard far across France and along
the coasts of England. Soon we enter villages, which lie within range
of the enemy's "heavies," with their shattered window glass, torn
roofs, ruined houses, tottering churches, and deep shell holes in the
streets. Now we are in the danger zone and have to put on our
shrapnel-proof steel helmets, and box respirators, to be ready for a
possible attack of poison gas.
Another turn in the road, and the great battle field rises in grim
reality before us. Far to the left stands the terrible Ypres salient,
so long swept by the tide of war, and away to the right are the blasted
woods of "Plug Street." Right before us rises the historic ridge of
Messines, won at such cost during the summer. We are standing now at
the foot of the low ridge where the British trenches were so long held
under the merciless fire of the enemy. From here to the top of the
ridge the ground has been fought over, inch by inch and foot by foot.
It is blasted and blackened, deep seamed by shot and shell. The trees
stand on the bare ridge, stiff and stark, charred and leafless, like
lonely sentinels of the dead. The ground, without a blade of grass
left, is torn and tossed as by earthquake and volcano. Trenches have
been blown into shapeless heaps of debris. Deep shell holes and mine
craters mark the advance of death. Small villages are left without one
stone or brick upon another, mere formless heaps, ground almost to
dust. Deserted in wild confusion, half buried in the churned mud, on
every hand are heaps of unused ammunition, bombs, gas shells, and
infernal machines wrecked or hurriedly left in the enemy's flight.
Here on June 7th, at three o'clock in the morning, following the heavy
bombardment which had been going on for days, the great attack began.
In one division alone the heavy guns had fired 46,000 shells and the
field artillery 180,000 more. The sound of the firing was heard across
France, throughout Belgium and Holland, and over the Surrey downs of
England, 130 miles away.
The Messines ridge is a long, low hill, only about 300 feet in height,
but it commands the countryside for miles around, and had become the
heavily fortified barrier to bar the Allied advance between Ypres and
Armentiers. Since December, 1914, the Germans had seamed the western
slopes with trenches, a network of tunnels and of concrete redoubts.
Behind the ridge lay the German batteries. For months this ridge had
been mined and countermined by both sides, until the English had placed
500 tons of high explosive, that is approximately 1,000,000 pounds of
amminol, beneath nineteen strategic points which were to be taken. At
the foot of the ridge, along a front of nine miles, the British had
concentrated their batteries, heavy guns, and vast supplies of
ammunition. Day and night for a week before the battle began, the
German positions had been shelled. At times the hurricane of fire died
down, but it never ceased. By day and by night the German trenches
were raided and explored. A large fleet of tanks was ready for the
advance. Hundreds of aviators cleared the air and dropped bombs upon
the enemy, assailing his ammunition dumps, aerodromes, and bases of
supplies. The battle had to be fought simultaneously by all the forces
on the land, in the air, and in the mines underground. All the horrors
of the cyclone and the earthquake were harnessed for the conflict.
In the early morning, a short, deathly silence followed the week's
terrific bombardment. At 2:50 a. m. the ground opened from beneath, as
nineteen great mines were exploded one by one, and fountains of fire
and earth like huge volcanoes leaped into the air. Hill 60, which had
dealt such deadly damage to the British, was rent asunder and
collapsed. It was probably the greatest explosion man ever heard on
earth up to that time. Then the guns began anew to prepare for the
attack and a carefully planned barrage dropped just in front of the
English battalions as they advanced. As the men came forward, the
barrage was lifted step by step and dropped just ahead of them, to
pulverize the enemy and protect the British troops. By five o'clock
Messines itself was captured by the fearless Australians. There was a
most desperate struggle just here where we were standing at Wytschaete.
All morning the battle raged along this line, but by midday it was in
the hands of the dashing Irish division. Seven thousand prisoners were
taken, while the British casualties, owing to the effective protection
of their terrific barrage, were far less than the German and only
one-fifth of what they had calculated as necessary to take this
strategic position.
We make our way up to the crest of the Messines ridge where we can look
back on the conquered territory and forward to the new lines. The
great guns are in action all about us. They are again wearing down the
enemy in preparation for the next advance. For the moment we feel only
the grand and awful throb of vast titanic forces in terrible conflict.
Day and night, in the air, on the earth, and beneath it, the war is
slowly or swiftly being waged. The fire of battle smolders or leaps
into flames or vast explosions, but never goes out.
Above us the very air is full of conflict. Hanging several hundred
feet high are half a dozen huge fixed kite-balloons, with their
occupants busily observing, sketching, mapping, or reporting the
enemy's movements. Each of these is a target for the attacking
aeroplanes and the occupants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to
leap into a parachute when they are shot down. High above these
balloons a score of British planes are darting about or dashing over
the enemy's lines, acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away
behind us. We are looking at one far up seemingly soaring in peace
like a graceful bird poised in the air, when suddenly we see it
surrounded by a dozen little white patches of smoke which show that it
has come within range of the enemy's anti-aircraft guns and the clouds
of shrapnel are bursting about it. Most of them break wide of the mark
and it sails on unscathed over the enemy's lines. Just above us is
hanging a German _taube_, obviously watching us and the automobile
which we had left below in the road, while the British huge
anti-aircraft guns near by are feeling for it, shot after shot.
We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just under the crest of the
ridge. It is an old, deserted German pit for deadly gas shells, which
even now are lying about uncomfortably near, in heaps still unexploded.
Here the men going to and from the trenches, come in for hot tea or
coffee and refreshments night and day. A significant sign forbids more
than thirty men to congregate at once in this exposed spot, as
sometimes these Y M C A dugouts are blown to atoms by a shell. The one
down below in "Plug Street" has been blown to bits, and the man in the
one just up the line has been under such fire for several days that he
will have to abandon his dugout.
Just in front of us over the ridge is the first line of the present
British front. There is no time to build trenches now or to dig
themselves in. They just hold the broken line of unconnected shell
holes, or swarm in the great craters which are held by rapid fire
machine guns. The men go out by night to relieve those who have been
holding the ground during the previous day. It is harder for the
enemy's artillery to locate and destroy men scattered in these
irregular holes and craters than if they were in a clear line of
trenches. The British front faces down the slope toward the bristling
German lines, dotted with hidden snipers and studded with sputtering
machine guns. As the evening falls the batteries behind and all about
us open fire. Flash after flash of spurting flame leaps out from the
great guns. Boom upon boom, deep voiced and varied, follows from the
many calibred guns in the darkness, till the night is lurid and the
ground beneath us quivers with the earthquake of bombardment.
High above we hear the piercing shriek of the shells speeding to their
fatal mark, and below the crash of the exploding shells of the enemy,
which toss the earth in dark waves into the air in the black surf of
war. Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in
a hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up
and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns,
as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey
lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day,
and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while
the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great
star hangs suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole
battlefield, and now a burning farmhouse or exploding ammunition dump
illuminates the sky as from some vast subterranean furnace flung open
upon the heavens. All the long sullen night the earth is rocked by
slow intermittent rumbling, till with the silent dawn the birds wake
and the war-giants sink for a few hours in troubled sleep. Then the
new day breaks and the war-planes climb in the clear morning air to
begin the battle afresh.
But let us turn from the hard-won ground of Messines to some of the men
who fought over it and survived. Here is a young American, Fred R----,
a graduate of Johns Hopkins, who fought in this battle with the
Canadians, and who told us in his own words the story of those brief
hours.
"Our opening barrage lasted about twenty minutes, but in that short
time some two million shells were dropped on the enemy from about nine
thousand of our guns. We could hear no distinct reports, just one
steady roar of continuous explosion. The ground shook beneath us and
fragments from the trenches and dugouts caved in about us from the
shock. The air was oppressive and you felt difficulty in breathing, as
if you were in a vacuum.
"About three o'clock in the morning the order came to 'Stand to!' and
shortly after the word rang out 'Up and over! Over the top boys, and
the best of luck!' With one foot on the fire step we climbed out of
the deep trench and with our rifles we started forward at a walk,
behind our advancing barrage. I was tense now and all of a tremble.
At a time like this every man is driven to his deepest thoughts. It is
not fear exactly, but apprehension and dread of the unknown.
"As we started forward, one young boy fell at my side. I heard him
call, 'O, Mother!' as he fell. Another cried, 'O, God!' and sank down
on the other side. Then my partner, a boy of eighteen, fell, both legs
blown away above the knee. I bound up his wounds and carried him on my
back to the nearest dressing station. 'Fred,' he said, 'would you mind
kissing me just once? So long!' and with that he was gone. Then I got
mad and began to see red. In the first trench I ran amuck and with
rifle, bayonet, and bombs I suppose I accounted for twenty men in the
hour that followed.
"I've been gassed three times, twice with the old gas and once with the
new, and I've had my share. Would I like to go home now? Say, I'd
rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago than
the whole electric light system in all the rest of the universe!"
We turned from this young American to Sapper W---- of Western Canada,
who had just been through the same battle underground, and asked him to
tell us his own story.
"Well, sir, long before the battle we were digging under Hill Number
60. A chance shell exploded on the surface above us and buried us all
underground. Three of us were killed and the other two left alive. I
had one man across my chest and another across my legs, one dead and
the other wounded. We could not move hand or foot. We were buried in
there for seven hours and they finally dug us out unconscious.
"Then we started another sap to lay a mine. My pal was listening, with
an iron rod driven in the ground and two copper wires leading from it
to a head piece, such as a wireless operator uses, so that we could
hear the approach of the enemy's sappers, who were countermining
against us. My pal asked me to come and listen. But I had hardly got
the headpiece on when I said, 'O Lord, they're on us!' and before I
could get the thing off my ears the end of our sap fell through and the
Germans were at us. There was only room to use revolvers and bayonets
in that dark hole and the Germans seemed to get nervous and could not
shoot straight in the panic. We lost only one of our men, but we
killed seven and took the rest of the twenty prisoners. Then, before
they found out what had happened, we crawled through to the German end
of the tunnel and blew up their sap.
"You say was I a Christian? Not me! I was wild and going to the
devil. But one night I was wounded and lay in a deserted shell hole,
shot through the thigh, and unable to move for fifteen hours. I was
feeling for a cigarette in my pocket to ease the pain a bit, but all I
could find was a little pocket testament which someone had given me,
but which I had never read. I managed to get it out and, thinking it
might be my last hour, and that I might never be found, I started to
read to try and forget my wound. I read the twenty-seventh chapter of
Matthew, and sir, that little book changed my life. I have read a
chapter every day since then. I was picked up by the infantry and
carried to a hospital. One night when I could not sleep for the pain,
the nurse asked me if she could do anything for me, and I asked her to
read the Bible to me. She said she had never read it in her life, and
I said it was about time she began, if that was so. After she read it,
she said it helped her too. Yes, I say my prayers on my knees in the
tent now. Another boy has joined me this week; and the language in the
tent is getting better. I'm off to the front tomorrow to take my turn
again. But I'm no longer alone up there in the trenches. It's
different now."
We have heard the story of one in the infantry and of a sapper
underground. Here is the experience of a young Canadian student from
McGill University in the artillery:
"The past weeks have been ten thousand hells. It is nothing but death,
noise, blood, and mud. There are only two of our sergeants left now
and we have to keep up our spirits. You often feel as if your brain
would burst. I couldn't begin to describe the inferno human beings
pass through every day. 'Happy' was shot to pieces with a shell a few
nights ago while in bed, both arms and one leg off. I carried him for
over four hours to the nearest dressing station and then stayed and
watched him die. He never whimpered. Though in terrible agony, he
died game, as he always was. That is about the hardest knock I have
ever had in my life. He is only one of my many friends that have gone.
Believe me, war is Hell."
Here is the account of a simple Australian boy in the front trench:
"Fritz had a machine gun to nearly every ten yards. I don't know what
became of my friends Hugh and Bill. They were just beside me, but when
I looked around both were gone. A shell landed just at the side of me,
and I think Hugh and Bill were blown to pieces. I got my wound in the
chest and the fragment came out through my back. I thought my last day
had come. I dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, than Mack
got it through the face. He was able to go back, but I was simply
helpless, as my legs refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off
my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench. No sooner
had I done this than Fritz started to bombard. One shell fell in the
hole in which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction. Then
another came and landed just above my head, but it failed to go off.
Had it gone off I never would have been here now. I had prayed hard to
my God to deliver me from my enemies and when those things happened I
felt my prayer was heard and that I was going to come through. I was
there in that hole all day and the next night before anyone came near
me. At last one of the 19th Battalion chaps came along and went for a
stretcher for me."
Such are the varying impressions which a battle makes upon various men.
It is no romance, but a grim reality of life and death. Far into the
night we lie awake and ask ourselves, what is the meaning of it all?
At first on the field of battle one thrills at the sound of mighty and
unearthly forces loosed, but in the din we suddenly realize that boys
are dying all about us, and that these guns bear swift death and
mangling to suffering men. Between us and the enemy are just a few
deep shell holes and a thin red line of flesh and blood, as a human
rampart, formed of men who hold their lives in their hands, ready to
make the great sacrifice. Behind us are the hidden guns and the
support trenches in the narrow strip of hard-won territory. Behind
these are the moving columns on the long roads, the pulsing arteries of
traffic, and the moving troop trains on the rails. Behind these in
turn are the plying ships, the millions of toiling workers, and the
suffering hearts of the nations in arms. Whole nations--yes, almost
the whole of humanity--are organized for war and dragged into deadly
conflict as by some devil's behest, instead of being organized for
brotherhood and the building of a better world. Oh, not for this
devil's work were men made. Surely mankind must come to its own in
these birth pangs of a new era. Never, never again must a whole
humanity of the free-born sons of God be dragged into the hell of war
to sate the pride or pomp of kings, or to glut the ambition of scheming
secret groups who have taught men that they are created as obedient
slaves.
Far behind us, marking the slow advance up this ridge of death, are the
sheltered cemeteries of white crosses that tell the price that has
already been paid. There are five thousand crowded graves in yonder
acre alone. Great is the price, awful in its solid weight of agony.
This is no longer a war between two peoples, but between two
principles; it is as much to free the German people as to protect
ourselves. It is not for this narrow strip of hard-won soil, but for
every foot of a world that from henceforth must be free. The men who
are fighting on grounds of moral principle would rather pay any price
than lie at ease under the false shadow of militarism, materialism, and
grasping greed. These men are fighting, and many of them know that
they are fighting, for a new world. Not only military oppression, but
industrial oppression, must go. Not only German militarism, and
Russian autocracy, and Turkish cruelty must be done away; but American
materialism must be purged in the fiery furnace of this war. Its
purposes will reach far beyond our ken, and though man's sin alone has
caused the war, its issues are in the hands of God. The whole war has
been a demonstration of the result of leaving God out of His world.
The world with God left out leaves war; and life with God left out
leaves hell.
There must be a turning to God in our own national life. We speak of
the menace of German militarism, but what is militarism but armed and
aggressive materialism, the deeper principle which lies behind it? And
what is materialism but organized selfishness? Materialism and
selfishness are the dangers of our own land as well as of Germany. And
the war is a call to set our own house in order.
America can no longer live to herself alone. She is fighting for the
freedom of humanity. Here on the very field of battle, at the
throbbing heart of the conflict, we ask ourselves, What is the real
issue of the war? What are they fighting for?
Away there in Austria a young crown prince, Francis Ferdinand, was
murdered. It was the spark which set off the powder mine of Europe.
But not for him are they fighting. Behind him stood the two contending
forces of the growing nationalism of Serbia and the expanding
commercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed in conflict, but
not for them are they fighting. Behind these stood two greater powers,
those of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, a growing Germany and a rising
Russia, which like a vast glacier for a thousand years had sought the
open sea. The ambitions of these two powers clashed in conflict at
Constantinople and elsewhere. But not for them are they fighting.
On the western front there were two deeper principles in conflict,
those of autocracy and democracy, the question whether one man and a
sinister, hidden group of plotting militarists could drag the whole
world into war and crush its liberties and its laws beneath the iron
heel of despotism, or whether man as man should stand erect in his
God-given right of freedom and work out his own destiny in friendly
brotherhood.
But behind even the great conflict between autocracy and democracy lay
a yet deeper issue. In the last analysis the final question in human
life is between a material and a spiritual interpretation of the
universe, whether might makes right and the strong are to rule, or
whether right makes might and the moral order is supreme. There is a
material and a spiritual side of life. On this side is the brute
struggle for life; on that, the struggle for the life of others; on the
one hand, the fight for the survival of the fittest, and on the other,
the fight to make men fit to survive. On the left hand is selfishness
and on the right service; on the one side are the red battlefields of
the enemy, and on the other is a cross red in sacrifice of a life laid
down in the serving and saving of men. There is a final issue in the
world between passion and principle, between wrong and right, between
darkness and light, between mammon and God, between self and Christ.
This ultimate issue must be faced by individuals and by nations. It is
the challenge which confronts men in this war. Seventy years ago a
crushed Europe faced the issue in the prophetic words of Mazzini,
written in the hour of darkness and defeat:
"Our victory is certain; I declare it with the profoundest conviction,
here in exile, and precisely when monarchical reaction appears most
insolently secure. What matters the triumph of an hour? What matters
it that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves
of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and
jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading
distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and
restored the former order of things? Can you restore men's faith in
it, or think you can long maintain it by brute force alone, now that
all faith in it is extinct? Threatened and undermined on every side,
can you hold all Europe forever in a stage of siege?" [1]
Pasteur sees the same issue looming even in his day and states it in
burning words at the close of his life:
"Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays, the
one a law of blood and of death, ever seeking new means of destruction
and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield; the
other a law of peace, work, and health, ever evolving new means of
delivering man from the scourges which beset him. The first seeks
violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places
one human life above any victory, while the former would sacrifice
hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. Which of these
two laws will ultimately prevail God only knows. We will have tried,
by obeying the laws of humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life." [2]
Lincoln faced the same issue in the midst of the war weariness of our
own great conflict with words which come back to the nation now with a
prophetic call:
"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
[1] Life and Writings of Mazzini, vol. v, pp. 269-271.
[2] Life of Pasteur, p. 271.