General A., who commands the corps of which my friend has one division.
Each of these French generals has a striking individuality of his own
which I wish I could fix upon paper. Their only common point is that
each seems to be a rare good soldier. The corps general is Athos with a
touch of d'Artagnan. He is well over six feet high, bluff, jovial, with
huge, up-curling moustache, and a voice that would rally a regiment. It
is a grand figure which should have been done by Van Dyck with lace
collar, hand on sword, and arm akimbo. Jovial and laughing was he, but
a stern and hard soldier was lurking behind the smiles. His name may
appear in history, and so may Humbert's, who rules all the army of
which the other's corps is a unit. Humbert is a Lord Robert's figure,
small, wiry, quick-stepping, all steel and elastic, with a short,
sharp upturned moustache, which one could imagine as crackling with
electricity in moments of excitement like a cat's fur. What he does or
says is quick, abrupt, and to the point. He fires his remarks like
pistol shots at this man or that. Once to my horror he fixed me with
his hard little eyes and demanded 'Sherlock Holmes, est ce qu'il est un
soldat dans l'armée Anglaise?' The whole table waited in an awful hush.
'Mais, mon general,' I stammered, 'il est trop vieux pour service.'
There was general laughter, and I felt that I had scrambled out of an
awkward place.
And talking of awkward places, I had forgotten about that spot upon the
road whence the Boche observer could see our motor-cars. He had
actually laid a gun upon it, the rascal, and waited all the long day
for our return. No sooner did we appear upon the slope than a shrapnel
shell burst above us, but somewhat behind me, as well as to the left.
Had it been straight the second car would have got it, and there might
have been a vacancy in one of the chief editorial chairs in London. The
General shouted to the driver to speed up, and we were soon safe from
the German gunners. One gets perfectly immune to noises in these
scenes, for the guns which surround you make louder crashes than any
shell which bursts about you. It is only when you actually see the
cloud over you that your thoughts come back to yourself, and that you
realise that in this wonderful drama you may be a useless super, but
none the less you are on the stage and not in the stalls.
* * * * *
Next morning we were down in the front trenches again at another
portion of the line. Far away on our right, from a spot named the
Observatory, we could see the extreme left of the Verdun position and
shells bursting on the Fille Morte. To the north of us was a broad
expanse of sunny France, nestling villages, scattered châteaux, rustic
churches, and all as inaccessible as if it were the moon. It is a
terrible thing this German bar--a thing unthinkable to Britons. To
stand on the edge of Yorkshire and look into Lancashire feeling that it
is in other hands, that our fellow-countrymen are suffering there and
waiting, waiting, for help, and that we cannot, after two years, come a
yard nearer to them--would it not break our hearts? Can I wonder that
there is no smile upon the grim faces of these Frenchmen! But when the
bar is broken, when the line sweeps forward, as most surely it will,
when French bayonets gleam on yonder uplands and French flags break
from those village spires--ah, what a day that will be! Men will die
that day from the pure, delirious joy of it. We cannot think what it
means to France, and the less so because she stands so nobly patient
waiting for her hour.
Yet another type of French general takes us round this morning! He,
too, is a man apart, an unforgettable man. Conceive a man with a large
broad good-humoured face, and two placid, dark seal's eyes which gaze
gently into yours. He is young and has pink cheeks and a soft voice.
Such is one of the most redoubtable fighters of France, this General of
Division D. His former staff officers told me something of the man. He
is a philosopher, a fatalist, impervious to fear, a dreamer of distant
dreams amid the most furious bombardment. The weight of the French
assault upon the terrible labyrinth fell at one time upon the brigade
which he then commanded. He led them day after day gathering up Germans
with the detached air of the man of science who is hunting for
specimens. In whatever shell-hole he might chance to lunch he had his
cloth spread and decorated with wild flowers plucked from the edge. If
fate be kind to him he will go far. Apart from his valour he is
admitted to be one of the most scientific soldiers of France.
From the Observatory we saw the destruction of a German trench. There
had been signs of work upon it, so it was decided to close it down. It
was a very visible brown streak a thousand yards away. The word was
passed back to the '75's' in the rear. There was a 'tir rapide' over
our heads. My word, the man who stands fast under a 'tir rapide,' be he
Boche, French or British, is a man of mettle! The mere passage of the
shells was awe-inspiring, at first like the screaming of a wintry wind,
and then thickening into the howling of a pack of wolves. The trench
was a line of terrific explosions. Then the dust settled down and all
was still. Where were the ants who had made the nest? Were they buried
beneath it? Or had they got from under? No one could say.
There was one little gun which fascinated me, and I stood for some time
watching it. Its three gunners, enormous helmeted men, evidently loved
it, and touched it with a swift but tender touch in every movement.
When it was fired it ran up an inclined plane to take off the recoil,
rushing up and then turning and rattling down again upon the gunners
who were used to its ways. The first time it did it, I was standing
behind it, and I don't know which moved quickest--the gun or I.
French officers above a certain rank develop and show their own
individuality. In the lower grades the conditions of service enforce a
certain uniformity. The British officer is a British gentleman first,
and an officer afterwards. The Frenchman is an officer first, though
none the less the gentleman stands behind it. One very strange type we
met, however, in these Argonne Woods. He was a French-Canadian who had
been a French soldier, had founded a homestead in far Alberta, and had
now come back of his own will, though a naturalised Briton, to the old
flag. He spoke English of a kind, the quality and quantity being
equally extraordinary. It poured from him and was, so far as it was
intelligible, of the woolly Western variety. His views on the Germans
were the most emphatic we had met. 'These Godam sons of'--well, let us
say 'Canines!' he would shriek, shaking his fist at the woods to the
north of him. A good man was our compatriot, for he had a very recent
Legion of Honour pinned upon his breast. He had been put with a few men
on Hill 285, a sort of volcano stuffed with mines, and was told to
telephone when he needed relief. He refused to telephone and remained
there for three weeks. 'We sit like a rabbit in his hall,' he
explained. He had only one grievance. There were many wild boars in the
forest, but the infantry were too busy to get them. 'The Godam
Artillaree he get the wild pig!' Out of his pocket he pulled a picture
of a frame-house with snow round it, and a lady with two children on
the stoop. It was his homestead at Trochu, seventy miles north of
Calgary.
* * * * *
It was the evening of the third day that we turned our faces to Paris
once more. It was my last view of the French. The roar of their guns
went far with me upon my way. Soldiers of France, farewell! In your own
phrase I salute you! Many have seen you who had more knowledge by which
to judge your manifold virtues, many also who had more skill to draw
you as you are, but never one, I am sure, who admired you more than I.
Great was the French soldier under Louis the Sun-King, great too under
Napoleon, but never was he greater than to-day.
And so it is back to England and to home. I feel sobered and solemn
from all that I have seen. It is a blind vision which does not see more
than the men and the guns, which does not catch something of the
terrific spiritual conflict which is at the heart of it.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
--He is trampling out the vineyard where the grapes of wrath are stored.
We have found no inspired singer yet, like Julia Howe, to voice the
divine meaning of it all--that meaning which is more than numbers or
guns upon the day of battle. But who can see the adult manhood of
Europe standing in a double line, waiting for a signal to throw
themselves upon each other, without knowing that he has looked upon the
most terrific of all the dealings between the creature below and that
great force above, which works so strangely towards some distant but
glorious end?
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Visit to Three Fronts, by Arthur Conan Doyle