bike; the roads are terrible, all this beastly “pavé” cobblestones; awful
stuff to ride over on a motor cycle. Shell holes on both sides of the
road, and I saw three graves in the corner of a hop garden. All along the
road there were dozens and dozens of old London motor buses, taking men to
the trenches. They still have the advertisements on them and are driven by
the bus-drivers themselves. Three hundred came over with their own
machines. They are now soldiers. The observation balloon I mentioned
yesterday was shelled down to-day.
I am writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I’m sitting in
has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage
wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are
at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here.
They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have
been filled in, all the wreckage cleared, and they have a new mayor.
-------------------------------------
It is not yet 7 A.M. I am an orderly officer and have to take the men out
for a run at six. I came back and bought a London “Daily Mail” of
yesterday from a country-woman. We are at least three miles from the town,
but they are enterprising enough to bring papers to us at this time in the
morning. A “Daily Mail” costs four cents.
Since I last wrote I have been up to the front line. Everything is
different from what you imagine. The German trenches are easily
distinguished through glasses; their sand-bags are multi-colored. Shrapnel
was bursting over ruins of an old town in their lines. When you look
through a periscope at the wilderness, it is difficult to imagine that
thousands of soldiers on both sides have burrowed themselves into the
earth. The evidence of their alertness is shown by their snipers, who are
always busy whenever the target is up.
A battery of eight-inch howitzers was opening fire. Our battery commander,
hearing this, sent us up. The guns, big fellows, were well concealed. They
were painted in protective colors and covered with screens of branches to
prevent aerial observation. In the grounds all over the place were
dug-outs, deep rabbit burrows, ten or twelve feet down, into which
everybody went immediately. The Germans started their “hate.” The firing
is done by hand cord; other big guns are fired electrically. An enormous
flash, an ear-splitting crash, a great sheet of flame from the muzzle, and
two hundred pounds of steel is sent tearing through the air to the
“Kultur” exponents. The whole gun lifts off the ground and runs back on
its oil-compression springs. These guns are moved by their own caterpillar
tractors which are kept somewhere close by. In three quarters of an hour
they can get them started on the road. The ground for these emplacements
was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three
times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men
took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could
once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few
minutes. At a few yards’ distance I couldn’t see the guns myself. The
“Hows” were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving
trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to “dust” the
neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who
are with the guns don’t see the effects. Apparently they fire straight
away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer
in the fire trenches who corrects them by ’phone.
After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the
chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror
panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most
of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in
splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a
shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been
drilled. It hadn’t smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room,
which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen.
Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a
horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion occurred in the garden.
“Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate,” said an artillery sub. We left! We
had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.
To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that
was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be
left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their
merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a
wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman’s undergarments. A
grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down
through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has
been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be
continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the
Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the
tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great
stew. In some of the villages a few of the inhabitants had stayed and
traded with the soldiers. They lived in cellars usually and suffered
terribly. British military police direct the traffic when there is any,
and are stationed at crossroads with regular beats like a city policeman.
While traveling to another part of the line we had an opportunity of
seeing the “Archies” (anti-aircraft guns) working. They were mounted on
lorries and fire quite good-sized shells. They fired about fifty shots at
one Taube, but didn’t register a bull. Later in the evening from a trench
we had the satisfaction of seeing another aeroplane set on fire, burn, and
drop into the German lines like a shot partridge. Aeroplanes are as common
as birds. Yesterday a “Pfeil” (arrow) biplane came right over our lines
and was chased off by our own machines. The enemy’s aeroplanes have their
iron cross painted on the underside of their wings and are more
hawkish-looking than ours. They are more often used for reconnoitering and
taking photographs than for dropping bombs.
We are being moved up closer to the firing line. I have been made
billeting officer. I went to headquarters; a staff colonel showed me a
subdivision on a map. “Go there and select a place for your unit.” The
place was a wretched village of about six houses, all of which are more or
less smashed about, windows repaired with sacking and pieces of wood. All
of the inhabitants have moved except those who are too poor. Every square
inch is utilized. I managed to get a cow-shed for the officers. It looks
comfortable. On the door I could just decipher, written in chalk, by some
previous billeting officer,—
2 Staff Officers
6 Officers
2 Horses
Billeting chalk marks are on almost all the shops and houses up from the
coast to the front.
The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller
who lived in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn’t speak
English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I
noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to
find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up
and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two
Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun
positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on
both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite
dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells,
very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man’s Land. The enemy has a
very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.
Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are
working hard, it is miserable here,—wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes,
smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a poor,
wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium,
where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.
Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by
sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened
shell-riddled town and knocked up an _estaminet_; we got a much finer meal
than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who
kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. “Oh, no! I sleep
upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at
night. Then I go into the cellar.” This woman was a very pleasant,
intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally
leave the danger zone.
Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with
putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party
returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with
scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over their clothes was a veneer of
plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way
sang—
“Left—Left—Left
We—are—the tough Guys!”
Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a
few beats they commenced again—
“Left—Left—Left—”
They looked exactly what they said they were.
Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under
observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy
information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the
same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in
the same way.
I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully
wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers said
quietly to him, “Be British.” He immediately straightened himself out and
asked for a “fag.” He died that night.
-------------------------------------
We had a terrific bombardment last night; the ground shook all night and
the sky was lit up for miles. The Boches used liquid fire on some new
troops and we lost ground.
I found this piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I
have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall,
and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place
passes as “Dead Cow Farm” on all official maps.
I’ve traveled many journeys in my one score years and ten,”
And oft enjoyed the company of jovial fellow men,
But of all the happy journeys none can compare to me
With the Red-Cross special night express from the trenches to the
sea.
“It’s Bailleul, Boulogne, Blighty, that’s the burden of the song,
Oh, speed the train along.
If you’ve only half a stomach and you haven’t got a knee,
You’ll choke your groans and try to shout the chorus after me.
Bailleul, Boulogne, and Blighty, dear old Blighty “cross the sea.”
“Now some of us are mighty bad and some are wounded slight,
And some will see their threescore years and some won’t last the
night,
But the Red Cross train takes up the strain all in a minor key
And sings Boulogne and Blighty as she rumbles to the sea.
“Oh, it’s better than the trenches and it’s better than the rain,
It’s better than the mud and stink; we’re going home again,
Though most of us have left some of us on the wrong side of the
sea.
We are a lot of blooming cripples, but—downhearted? No, siree.
“There’s a holy speed about this train for each of us can see
That we will cross the shining channel that lies ’twixt her and me
To the one and only Blighty, our Blighty, ’cross the sea,’
Where the blooming Huns can never come, ’twixt her and home and
me.”
“Blighty” is the wound which sends a man home to England; it’s a war word
which came originally from the Indians, but now universally adopted in the
new trench language.
I was walking along a trench when a man, who was sitting on a firestep
looking up into a little trench mirror (which is used by putting the end
of the bayonet between the glass and the frame), just crumpled up, shot
through the heart. He didn’t say a word. The trench had thinned out and
the bullet had come through, nearly four feet down from the top of the
parapet.
Bad shell fire this afternoon. Saw shells churning things up seventy-five
yards away; many passed overhead; had a ride on my motor cycle with the
other officers to reconnoiter the roads leading down to the part of the
trenches we have taken over; road was shelled as we came along. Two “coal
boxes” hit the road and smashed up a cottage in front of us; we picked up
pieces of the shell too hot to hold.
Our billet now is another large farm, with the pump in the center of the
manure heap as usual; our machines are parked all round a field close to
the hedges to make a smaller target and also to prevent aerial
observation.
I went through a town this morning which has been on everybody’s lips for
months—I have never seen such devastation in my life; it baffles
description. The San Francisco earthquake was a joke to this. Thousands
and thousands of shells have pummeled and smashed until very little
remains besides wreckage. Most of the shelling has been done to
deliberately destroy the objects of architectural value.
My quarters are in a loft amongst rags, old agricultural implements,
sacks, and the accumulation of years of dirt; flies wake me up at
daylight.
This morning I went for a drink in the _estaminet_ I have mentioned
already. Two shells have been through the sides of the house since we were
last there, but they both came through at the usual scheduled time.
This poor country is pockmarked with shell craters like a great country
with a skin disease. Trees have been splintered worse than any storm could
do. Nothing has been spared. The mineral rights of this territory should
be very valuable some day. When we have all finished salting the earth
with nickel, lead, steel, copper, and aluminum, old-metal dealers will
probably set up offices in No Man’s Land.
Belgium will have to be rebuilt entirely, or left as it is, a monument to
“Kultur.”
-------------------------------------
My section has been ordered up to a divisional area on the south of the
salient. In accordance with instructions I went up to Ypres this morning
to find a place to park the machines.
Contrary to the popular belief, we do not fight our guns from the motor
cycles themselves. We use our machines to get about on, and the guns are
taken up as near as possible to the position we are to occupy, which is
usually behind Brigade Headquarters. Brigadiers have a great aversion to
any kind of motor vehicle being driven past their headquarters, owing to
the movement and noise, which they believe attracts attention to
themselves, and as a rule the sentries posted outside will see that no
machines go by. We get up as far as we can, because after we part from our
machines, everything must be carried up through the trenches by hand.
[Illustration]
Bringing Up A Motor Machine Gun
I arrived at the town early and reported to the major who is in charge of
the town and of the troops quartered there. He was living in the prison, a
substantial brick and stone building, which has been smashed about a bit,
but which is still a fairly good structure. The major is a fine, gruff old
gentleman who was a master of fox hounds in the North of England. He came
over with a detachment of cavalry. He is past the age limit, and it was
decided that although he was a fine soldier, perhaps his age would be a
deterrent and his job ought to be something lighter, so they gave him one
of the fiercest jobs in the world—O. C. Ypres!
I was sent in, and when he heard my errand he said, “You want to park your
machines in Ypres? Why don’t you take them up in the German front lines?
You’ll be safer there than here. Listen to the shelling now.” I knew this,
but I was doing just exactly what I was told. He continued: “I have now
thousands of troops here and my daily casualties are enormous, so
naturally I don’t want any more men. The best plan for you will be to go
down the Lille road and pick a house below ‘Shrapnel Corner.’ ”
I went on through the town, under the Lille gate, across the tram lines,
past the famous cross-roads known as “Shrapnel Corner” and chummed up with
some artillery officers. They told me that I could have any of the houses
I wanted. I picked a couple which looked to me to be more complete than
the rest and chalked them up. This whole place was alive with batteries.
While I was there I heard a shout and suddenly a hidden battery of guns,
sunk behind the road with the muzzles almost resting on it, started firing
across in the direction of the part of Belgium occupied by Fritz. I had
passed within two feet of these guns and yet had not seen them, they were
so well “camouflaged.” On my way back I saw the “Big Berthas” bursting in
the town, and I was surprised that so little damage had been actually done
to the Lille gate itself. Shells had visited everywhere in the
neighborhood, but had not smashed this old structure.
I went home, collected my men together, and told them the importance of
the work we were to undertake. I have found it always a good thing to make
the men think the job that they are doing is of great importance. Better
results are obtained that way.
We went to an “engineer dump” on the way up just after the enemy had
landed a shell on a wagon loading building material, and wounded were
being carried off and the mangled horses had been dragged on one side. As
the wounded came by I called my section to attention, the compliment due
to wounded men paid by units drawn up.
We drew our sandbags in the usual way by requisitioning for five thousand
and getting one thousand. Always ask for more than you expect to get.
As we came into Ypres, a military policeman on duty told me it was
unhealthy to go the usual way through the Market Square, because the
shelling was bad in that part of the town, so I spread the machines out
and started on down a side street. We were getting on finely and I was
congratulating myself on getting through, when two houses, hit from the
back, collapsed across the street in front of my machine. Without any
ceremony I turned my machine back along the street which we had come and
went through the Market Square down the Lille road, under the gate, being
followed by my section. About four hundred yards down I stopped; holding
my solo motor cycle between my legs, standing up, I looked back. I counted
my machines as they came up. If it hadn’t been so scary, it really would
have been funny, to see these machines coming down the road through shell
holes and over piles of bricks, as fast as the drivers could make them go.
The men were hanging on for dear life and the machines rocked from side to
side, but they were all there.
Down the road we went to the houses; there we parked the machines and
unpacked. A guard was placed over them and the rest of us marched down to
the trenches.
-------------------------------------
An officer has to buy all his own equipment and is allowed two hundred and
fifty dollars by the Government towards the cost. An officer carries a
revolver, but all junior officers as soon as possible acquire a rifle. The
men of a “salvage company” were collecting all the rifles, bayonets, and
parts of equipment near where I was to-day and I managed to get a
Lee-Enfield (British rifle) in good shape. I felt that I would like to
have a rifle and bayonet handy. I found a good-looking bayonet sticking in
the side of a sandbag wall. It looked lonely. The scabbard I am using was
resting in a loft of a deserted brewery. I am now complete with rifle,
bayonet, and scabbard.
[Illustration]
"Wipers"
Sometimes you see a man smashed about in a terrible way, such a mess that
you think he is a goner; he may recover. Another man may have just a small
wound and will die. A bullet hitting a man in the head will smash it as
effectually as a sledge-hammer. Once a man leaves your unit, wounded, you
don’t see him again. You get a fresh draft.
No one thinks of peace here. Germany must be put in a similar state to
Belgium first.
We never travel anywhere without our smoke helmets; they come right over
our heads and are tucked into our shirts; they have two glass eye-pieces.
When we have them on we look like the old Spanish gentleman who ran the
“Star Chamber.” Helmets must always be ready to put on instantly. Gas is a
matter of seconds in coming over. The helmets are better than respirators,
but have to be constantly inspected. A small hole, or if one is allowed to
dry, means a casualty.
Storm brewing. Flies bad, driven in by the wind. Nature goes on just the
same. I suppose that this farm would be just as fly-ridden in an ordinary
summer. During the bombarding yesterday I noticed swallows flying about
quite unconcerned. Corn, mostly self-planted, grows right up to the
trenches. Cabbages grow wild. Communicating trenches run right through
fields of crops; flowers grow in profusion between the lines, big red
poppies and field daisies, and there are often hundreds of little frogs in
the bottom of the trenches.
-------------------------------------
A trip to No Man’s Land is an excursion which you never forget. It varies
in width and horrors. My impression was similar to what I should feel
being on Broadway without any clothes—a naked feeling. Forty-seven and one
half inches of earth are necessary to stop a bullet, and it’s nice to have
that amount of dirt between you and the enemy’s bullets. The dead lie out
in between the lines or hang up on the wire; they don’t look pretty after
they have been out some time. It’s a pleasant job to have to get their
identification disks, and we have to search the bodies of the enemy dead
for papers and even buttons so that we can know what unit is in front of
us. Flowers grow in between, butterflies play together, and birds nest in
the wire. When the grass becomes too high it has to be cut, because
otherwise it would prevent good observation. In some places grass doesn’t
have a chance to even take root, let alone grow. The shells take care of
that.
I managed to get a translation of a diary kept by a German soldier who
fell on the field. Below is an exact translation and gives the point of
view of a man in the trenches on the other side of the line. He was
writing his diary at the same time I was writing mine, and we were both
fighting around the salient at Ypres, Hooge being on the point of the
salient farthest east. This part, which was once a place of beauty which
people came long distances to see, is now like a great muddy Saragossa Sea
which at the height of its fury has suddenly become frozen with the
tortured limbs of trees and men, and wreckage and reeking smells, until it
can again lash itself in wild fury into whirlpools. It is in all respects
Purgatory, but of greater horror than Dante ever dreamt of.
-------------------------------------
_Diary of F---- P---- of the 6th Company, 3d Battalion, 132d Regiment.
Killed at Hooge on August 9th, 1915._
On May 10, we were told to prepare for the journey to the front. Each man
received his service ammunition and two days’ rations, and we then started
with heavy packs on our backs and our water-bottles full of coffee. After
a long march we reached our reserve position, where we were put into rest
billets for two days in wooden huts hidden in a wood. We could hear from
here the noise of the shells coming through the air.
On May 13, we moved into the trenches, in the night. We were a whole hour
moving along a communication trench one and one-half metres deep, right up
to the front line some fifty metres from the enemy. This was to be our
post. We had hardly got in before the bullets came flying over our heads.
Look out for the English! They know how to shoot! I need hardly say we did
not wait to return the compliment. We answered each one of their greetings
and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for
twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.
At length early on the 15th, at four o’clock, came our first attack. After
a preliminary smoking-out with gas, our artillery got to work, and about
ten o’clock we climbed out of the trenches and advanced fifty metres in
the hail of bullets. Here I got my first shot through the coat. Three
comrades were killed at the outset of the assault, and some twenty
slightly or severely wounded, but we had obtained our object. The trench
was ours, although the English twice attempted to turn us out of it.