THE FIELD OF BATTLE
"To see the damage done by the Germans in unfortified villages."
This was the quest that first passed me into the zone of military
operations, that first landed me on the field of battle, and gave me my
first experience under fire.
Ambassador Herrick had procured a pass for me and two other Paris
correspondents; it covered also an automobile and chauffeur, and was
signed by General Galliéni, the Military Governor and Commander of the
Army of Paris. Mr. Herrick explained that he had requested it, because
we had not attempted to leave the city without credentials--as had many
correspondents--"by the back door," as he said. He considered that it
was time for some of us to go out openly "by the front door," in order
to later tell the truth to America.
We took the pass thankfully. It was good for a week and would take us
"anywhere on the field of battle." We have always been thankful that
this pass was handed to us by Ambassador Herrick in his private room at
the American Embassy, and that it was requested of General Galliéni by
the Ambassador himself--that it was his idea and not ours. For later
it developed that a pass from General Galliéni was not sufficient to
take us "anywhere on the field of battle"--the pass itself disappeared
and we came back to Paris as prisoners of war. We were told that we
were arrested because we were "at the front without credentials." Our
defense was clear, because, we argued, when an ambassador asks for
something, a record of that request exists. Ambassador Herrick made a
similar declaration, and we were not only released but "expressions of
regret" for our "detention" were tendered us.
We rented a car and a French chauffeur. We wore rough clothes and heavy
overcoats, we took extra socks, collars, soap, shaving utensils and
candles. As food we took sardines, salmon, cocoa, biscuits, coffee,
sausage, bread, bottles of wine and water. We also bought an alcohol
lamp, aluminum plates, collapsible drinking cups and jack-knives. At
four o'clock that afternoon we started.
In retrospect I divide the ensuing days into two parts, and in the
latter part I believe that the high water mark of my existence was
reached--at least the high tide from the standpoint of new sensations,
excitement, and genuine thrills. To digress for an instant, I have
somewhere read the account of a person, a well-known novelist, who
visited the French trenches months after the period I shall describe;
when he got away from his censor and was safe back in America, he
reported that no correspondents have really seen anything in this
war--and that many of their stories are fakes. Some correspondents,
including this one, have not seen much. Some stories have been
fakes, including the one which he told. I wish it were permissible
to enumerate some of the fakes in detail--but I wish for the sake of
this person that he had been along in either the second or the first
portions of that trip;--when, just a few miles outside Paris, we first
heard the Sentries in the Dark--when, the next morning we met the first
batch of Wounded Who Could Walk--and later, when we ate luncheon to an
orchestra of bursting shells, a luncheon ordered quietly--to be eaten
quietly, during a Lull in the Bombardment.
(A) Sentries in the Dark
The car whizzed down the straight country road. We were trying to
make night quarters thirty kilometers away. The dusk was already upon
us--and the rain. Every night for a week the rain had come at dusk.
We were well behind the battle lines, but the Germans had held that
countryside only a few days before. Many of them still lurked in the
dense woods. At dusk they were apt to shoot at passing motors. If
they killed the occupants, they secured clothes and credentials and
attempted cutting through to their own lines. The night before, a
French general had been killed on the road we were passing. Therefore
it was not well to be abroad at dusk, too far northward on the
battlefield of the Aisne. But we had cast a tire and lost considerable
time. It was necessary to go forward or strike back toward Paris.
To remain in the open held an additional risk of being stopped by a
British patrol--we were near their lines--and the British were not
so polite as the French about requisitioning big touring cars. Our
credentials were French.
So we dipped into the night down a long road that ran between solid
shadows of towering trees, behind which ran the continuous hedge of
the French countryside, making an ideal hiding place for enemies. The
rain increased and so did the cold. Our French driver struggled into an
ulster and we crouched low in the body of the limousine, watching the
whirling road revealed by our powerful headlights fifty yards in front
of the car.
Suddenly came a sharp cry. The chauffeur crashed on the brakes and the
car slid to a standstill. I knew that cry from many a novel I had read,
but I had never actually heard it before. It was the famous "Qui vive"
or "Who goes there?" of the French army. We sat waiting. We saw no one.
The rain poured down.
The cry was repeated. A soldier stepped into the road and stood in the
light of our lamps about thirty feet away. His rifle was half thrown
across his arm and half aimed towards us. He was a tall, handsome chap
wearing a long coat buttoned back at the bottom away from his muddy
boots. His cap was jammed carelessly over one eye. He bent forward and
peered at us under our lights, which half blinded him. Then we saw two
dusky shadows at either side of the car. We caught the steel flash of
bayonets turned toward us.
The chauffeur saw them too, for he cried out nervously, "Non, non!" The
soldier in the road ignored him. In the dramatic language of France
his "_Avancez--donnez le mot de la nuit_" sounded far more impressive
than the English equivalent about advancing to give the countersign. He
spoke the words simply, a little monotonously, with an air of having
done it many times during his period of watch. Then he bent lower and
peered more intently under the lights, brushing one arm across his face
as though the pelting rain also interfered with his business of seeing
in the night.
The chauffeur stated that we carried the signed pass of General
Galliéni. If we had mentioned the Mayor of Chicago we would not
have made less impression. The ghostly sentries at the sides of the
car did not budge. The patrol in the center of the road in the same
almost monotone announced that one of us would descend. One would
be sufficient. The others might keep the shelter of the car. But he
would see these credentials from General X----. If to him they did not
appear in order, our fate was a matter within his discretion. We were
traveling an important highway and his orders were definite. So the
member of our party who carried the important slip of paper descended.
The sentry in the road moved further into the light. As he read the
pass he sheltered it from the rain under the cape of his coat. The
guards at the sides of the car remained as though built in position.
Then the leader handed back the paper and brought his hand to salute.
The others immediately broke their pose; moved into the light and
likewise saluted. The tension relieved, we all felt friendly. As we
started forward I held a newspaper out of the window and three hands
grasped it simultaneously. We had hundreds of newspapers, for some one
had told us how welcome they would be at the front.
At an intersection of roads a couple of miles further on, the rain was
pelting down so fiercely that we did not clearly hear the "qui vive."
The chauffeur desperately called out not to shoot as a file of soldiers
suddenly swung across the road with rifles leveled. On their leader
we then tried an experiment which we afterwards followed religiously.
We handed over a newspaper with our pass. To our surprise he turned
first to the government war communiqué on the first page and read it
through, grunting his satisfaction meanwhile, before he even glanced
at the document which held our fate and on which the rain was making
great inky smears. Then he saluted and we drove on rapidly--everybody
smiling.
The road then led up an incline through a small village that was
filled with soldiers. A patrol halted us as usual and informed us
that there was no hotel within another five miles, and possibly even
that hotel might be closed. At this news our excitable chauffeur
immediately killed his engine and the car started slipping backward
down the incline. Fifty soldiers leaped forward and held it while the
brakes were applied. We distributed a score of newspapers and as many
cigarettes before we could get under way.
We passed no more patrols, but when our lights finally picked out the
first signs of the next village they also brought into bold relief a
pile of masonry completely blocking the road. We stopped. A villager
loomed out of the dark at the side of the car and informed us that
the road was barred because the bridge just beyond had been blown
up and that we could not pass over the pontoon until morning. The
inn, he said, had never been closed nor was its stock of tobacco yet
exhausted. He offered to conduct us, and when the innkeeper--a very
fat innkeeper--looked over our credentials from General Galliéni he
insisted that certain guests should double up, in order to make room
for us in the crowded place. He then called his wife, his daughter, his
father and his father's wife, that they might be permitted the honor
of shaking us by the hand, as he held aloft the candle, the flame of
which flickered down the ancient stone corridor that led to our rooms.
(B) The Wounded Who Could Walk
We were crossing a battlefield four days old. It was remarkable how
much it resembled the ordinary kind of field. The French had conquered
quickly at this point and the dead had been buried. Except for frequent
mounds of earth headed by sticks forming crosses; except for the marks
of shrapnel in the roads and on the trees; except for the absence of
every living thing, this countryside was at peace. The sun was shining.
The frost had brought out flaming tints on the hills. It was glorious
Indian summer.
The road we were motoring wound far away through the battlefield. For
the armies had fought over a front of many miles. We traveled slowly.
As we topped a rise and searched the valley below with our glasses, a
mile away in the cup of the valley we saw a moving mass. It filled the
roadway from hedge to hedge and appeared to be approaching us. We drove
more slowly, stopping several times. The movement of the car made the
glasses quiver and blur. We saw that the moving mass stretched back a
considerable distance--perhaps the length of a city block. We stopped
our engine and waited in the center of the road.
As the mass came nearer it outlined itself into men. We saw that they
were soldiers; but we could not distinguish the uniform. So we waited.
We even got our papers ready to show if necessary. Then we saw that
the soldiers were not of the same regiment--that their uniforms were
conglomerate. We saw the misfits of the French line regiments, the gay
trappings of the Spahis and Chasseurs d'Afrique, the skirt trousers of
the Zouaves, Turcos and Senegalese, the khaki of the English Tommies
and the turbans of the Hindoos. But all these men in the varied
costumes of the army of the Allies wore one common mark--a bandage.
Arm or head or face was wrapped in white cloths, usually stained with
blood. For these on whom we waited were the wounded who could walk.
They were going from the battle trenches to somewhere in the rear.
The front rank glanced wonderingly at the big motor that blocked the
center of the road and moved aside in either direction. Those behind
did likewise, until there was a lane for the car to pass. But we
waited. As the front rank came level with us, a dust-caked British
Tommy, with a bloody bandage over one eye, winked his good one at us
and touched his cap in salute. We took our hats off as the tragic crowd
surrounded us. Tommy sat down on our running board and I handed him a
cigarette.
The cigarette established cordial relations at once. Tommy's lean face
was browned by the sun and streaked with dirt. About the bandage which
encircled his head and crossed his right eye were cakes of dirt and
clots of blood. His hair where his cap was pushed back was sand color
and crinkly. The eye that turned up to me was pale blue and the skin
just about it was white and blue veined.
"Is this Frawnce or is it Belgium?" he asked me. At my answer he
squirmed around on the running board, calling to a companion in khaki
just coming up--his arm in a sling--"'Ee says it's Frawnce." The other
nodded indifferently and saluted us.
I asked the man about the battle, but he only stared. His friend on the
running board turned his eye upward and said, "It's 'ell, that's wot
it is." I replied that my question had to do with the course of the
battle--which side was winning; and he too only stared at that. Then he
arose and plodded on and I gave a cigarette to his companion.
A score of men stood about the front of the car where the chauffeur
was busy handing out apples and pears. My companions were busy on the
opposite side with a dozen French infantrymen, telling the latest news
from Paris and giving out newspapers. I leaned over them, the box of
cigarettes still in my hand. A tall Senegalese standing back from
the group caught sight of the box and called out, "Cigarette, eh!" I
motioned him to my side of the car. He came running weakly, followed at
once by fifty others. I handed out until that box and several others
that I dug from my valise were exhausted. I called several times that
I had no more, but still they crowded about, stretching out their arms
and crying, "Cigarette, eh?" One of my companions warned me that we
might ourselves feel the want of tobacco--that money would not buy it
in the country we were traversing, because it did not exist.
We still had a box of cigars and I had several loose in my pocket.
The black face of a Turco appeared at the car window. One arm was in
a sling and a bandage was wound about his brow. But his eyes shone
brightly at the thought of tobacco, and at the smell of it now arising
on all sides. He was tobacco hungry. He was more than that. He was
tobacco starving. He poked his other arm into the car. I motioned him
to crowd his entire bulk into the window so that the others would not
see. Then I gave him a cigar. He hung over the car frame as I held out
the lighted tip of my own cigar. He puffed a cloud into the interior.
He looked at the cigar fondly and seemed to measure its length. It was
a good cigar. If it had been a miserable cheroot his regard would have
been the same. He took another puff, and drew a complete mouthful into
his lungs. His cheeks bulged and his eyes glinted inwards as though he
looked at the tip of his nose. I wondered how long he could keep that
huge mouthful of smoke within him. Again he held the cigar close to his
eyes and seemed to measure its length. It burned perfectly round and
the ash was white and solid. Finally he poured forth the smoke from
nose and mouth and ejaculated the only English word he knew--"good." I
nodded and asked in French where he had been fighting. He cocked his
head toward the fore part of the car and took another puff. I asked him
where he had been wounded and he replied that he did not know but that
it occurred in the trenches "là bas." I asked him how long he had been
fighting in France--how long since he had left Africa, and he spread
his arm far out to indicate that the time had been long. I asked him
where he was going; he rolled his eyes to the rear of the car and said
he did not know.
I sank back in my seat and he climbed down into the road. Most of the
troop had limped off. To the few still lingering we indicated that our
stock of things to give away was exhausted. They eyed us wistfully,
then passed on.
The chauffeur asked if he should start the car, but some one said,
"No, let's wait until they all pass." The rear guard straggled up;
many were ready to drop with fatigue and pain and loss of blood. I
asked a Britisher how long they had been on the road. He replied "since
sunrise" and plodded stolidly on. It was then noon. Several sank
down for moments under the trees by the roadside. A chasseur stopped
and asked our chauffeur to tighten a thong of his bandage, which was
stained with fresh blood. We asked him where they were going and he
replied vaguely, "To the rear." "And what then?" one of us asked. "Oh!
I hope we will all be fighting again soon," he replied. They were all
like that. They wanted to be fighting again soon. They were not happy.
They were not unhappy. They were indifferent; more or less, made so by
utter fatigue and the pain of their wounds. But they all wanted to be
fighting again soon.
We watched them top the rise of the hill to disappear down the long
road "to the rear." The last straggler, his head bound with white and
red, vanished. They were all privates--all common men of all the world
from Scotland to Hindustan. The majority were coming from and going
they knew not where, and wanting to fight again for they knew not
what--except possibly the men of France, who began to hear about this
war in their cradles.
We cranked up the car.
(C) A Lull in the Bombardment
The sentry just outside the town advised us to right about face and
travel the other direction. But he only advised us. Our credentials
appeared in order and he did not feel that he could issue a command
on the subject. In fact our credentials were very much in order. The
sentry saluted us most respectfully; but his advice was wasted. We
argued to ourselves that if we went to "the front" we must take a few
chances.
So we entered Soissons--one of the most beautiful and historic towns in
Northern France. It has now become even more historic; but its beauty
has changed from the crumbling medieval. It is a ruin--more--a remnant
of the Great War.
We did not notice this so much as we rode down the winding road to
the outskirts. We did notice the unusual fall of autumn foliage. We
commented on the early season; the preceding night had been frosty,
following rain. Then we noticed many branches lying across the road.
Many trees were chipped as with an ax, but the chipped places were
high up--out of reach. We wondered why the trees were chipped so high.
Then we skirted a great hole in the center of the road. A tree further
on was cut off close to the ground. The truth came to us. The fallen
leaves and the chipped places were the work of bullets--a multitude of
bullets. The hole in the road and the fallen tree were the results of
shells.
We saw horses lying in the fields. Their legs stuck rigidly into the
air. Horses were lying along the roadside. Insects were crawling over
them. Fallen trees lined the way into the town.
We turned into the main street and rattled over its cobblestones.
We met no one. Crossing an open square we saw that over half the
trees were down. Up a side street a house had fallen forward from
its foundations and settled in a crumbled heap in the center of the
road. The sun which had been shining brightly went behind a cloud. We
stopped for a moment. We could hear the wind sighing in the tops of the
remaining trees. Some one asked, "Is this Sunday?" and was answered,
"No. It's Friday. Why?" He replied, "Because it is so still. Did you
ever see a place where people live that is so completely silent?" "It
reminds me of London on Good Friday--everybody gone to church," said
another.
We drove on. A block along the main street a soldier in the French
uniform of the line lounged in a doorway. His long blue overcoat
flapped desolately over his baggy red trousers. His rifle leaned in the
corner. We asked if any hotel remained open. He replied, "I don't know.
Have you a cigarette?" I drew out a box and he ran to the car, seizing
it as a hungry animal snatches food. He settled back into his doorway,
smiling; then said in French argot which translated into American best
reads: "Do you guys know you ain't safe here?" We smiled and waited
explanation. But he merely shrugged his shoulders. We started the car.
More French soldiers lounged in doorways. Once we saw the white and
frightened face of a woman peering at us from a window. She was
entirely incurious. Her gaze was dispassionate. She appeared to have
not the slightest interest either in us or our big car, which surely
was a rare sight in the streets of that town on that day. But the
fright upon her face was stamped.
Several villagers stood at the next corner. They exhibited interest.
We again asked about a hotel and one pointed to a building we had just
passed. We noted that its doors and windows were barred; but we thought
they might open up.
We asked, then, when the firing on the town had ceased. The man
laughed. Anything so normal as a laugh seemed out of place in that
ghastly silence. It grated. But it seemed that after all one might
observe the function of laughing even during war. He informed us that
the German gunners were probably at lunch. We asked the position of
the French batteries, and as he pointed vaguely toward the south
we realized that we were then in an advance position on the firing
line--that the force of soldiers was only an outpost. The same man told
us that the town had been under fire for eight days, that the French
had shifted the position of their heavy guns and that the Germans
were now trying to locate them. We returned to the hotel, stabled our
automobile and ordered luncheon, which the landlord informed us would
be ready in half an hour. So we continued the exploration of the town
on foot.
The chauffeur did not accompany us, for there was a captured German
automobile in the barn that interested him greatly. Under the seat he
found the army papers of the German driver. He advised us not to touch
them. They were dangerous. If found in our possession we might be
arrested as spies. So we dropped them back under the seat, and went out
into the market place.
As is usual in small French cities the market consisted of a large
building entirely open at the ends and fronting on a large square
paved with cobbles. We walked into the building; it was deserted and
our footsteps echoed. In the center was a pile of masonry, beneath a
large hole in the roof torn by a shell. The explosion had cracked the
side walls. In one of the cracks was jammed the top of a meat table,
forcibly caught up from the floor and hurled there. A little further on
a shell had passed through both side walls, leaving clean holes large
enough for a man to stand.
I stood in one of them and saw where the shell had spent its force
on a residence across the square. It had caught the house plumb on a
corner and at the floor of the second story, so that the floor sagged
down into the room below. The room above had been a bedchamber. The
entire side wall was gone, so all that remained of the intimacies of
the room were exposed. The bed with the covers thrown back as though
the occupant quitted it hurriedly had slipped forward until stopped by
a broken bit of the wall. From another jagged piece of masonry that
formed part of the wall the blue skirt of a child flapped desolately
over the sidewalk. We left the market building and stood in the center
of the square looking down the six streets that emptied into it. They
were narrow, winding streets, and we could not see far. But in all we
could see the ruin--the crumbled masonry and walls blackened by fire.
We looked at our watches and hurried toward the hotel. Entering the
street, about half a block distant, we stopped to look down a side
alley. As we looked we heard what seemed to be a shrill whistle,
pitched high and very prolonged. It seemed like the shriek of a
suddenly rising wind; but it was followed by a dull boom and the crash
of falling masonry. We looked behind us and saw clouds of smoke and
dust rising a short distance beyond the market place. We ran toward
the hotel. At the entrance we again heard the high-pitched screaming
whistle, ending in a crash much more acute. "That struck nearer," one
of us observed. But we did not wait to see. As we entered the hall,
the landlord remarked, "_Ça commence encore_."
We filed into the dining room in time to see him carefully place the
soup upon the table.