VIVE LA FRANCE!
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
“High-explosive!”
“A geyser of earth and smoke shot high into the air. Then an explosion
which was brother to an earthquake.”
]
VIVE LA FRANCE!
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
WAR CORRESPONDENT OF _THE NEW YORK WORLD_, _THE LONDON DAILY MAIL_, AND
_SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE_, WITH THE ALLIED ARMIES
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published December, 1915
[Illustration: [Logo]]
TO
FRANCE
WHOSE COURAGE, SERENITY, AND
SACRIFICES, IN A CONFLICT WHICH SHE
DID NOTHING TO PROVOKE, HAVE WON HER
THE SYMPATHY, RESPECT AND ADMIRATION
OF THE WORLD
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the assistance they have given me, and for the innumerable
kindnesses they have shown me, I welcome this opportunity of expressing
my thanks and appreciation to his Excellency Jean Adrien Antoine Jules
Jusserand, French ambassador to the United States; to Lord Northcliffe,
owner of _The Times_ and _The Daily Mail_; to Ralph Pulitzer, Esq.,
president, and C. M. Lincoln, Esq., managing editor, of _The New York
World_; to Major-General Ryerson, of the Canadian Overseas Contingent;
to Captain Count Gérard de Ganay, who was my companion from end to end
of the western battle-line; to Messrs. Ponsot, Alexis Leger, and Henri
Hoppenot, of the Bureau de la Presse; to Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer
Cosby, military attaché of the American embassy in Paris; to Captain
John W. Barker, of the American Military Mission in France; to Honorable
Walter V. R. Berry; to Charles Prince, Esq., Herbert Corey, Esq.,
Lincoln Eyre, Esq., and William Philip Simms, Esq., who on a score of
occasions have proved themselves my friends; and finally to James Hazen
Hyde, Esq., whose kindness I can never fully repay. To each of these
gentlemen I owe a debt of gratitude which I shall not forget.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
HÔTEL DE CRILLON, PARIS,
November, 1915.
CONTENTS
PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii
CHAPTER
I. IN THE FIELD WITH THE FRENCH 1
II. ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 56
III. CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 97
IV. THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 120
V. THE FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 154
VI. THE CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 190
VII. THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 215
ILLUSTRATIONS
“High-explosive!” │ _Frontispiece_
│ FACING PAGE
French trenches in the sand-dunes of the Belgian littoral 4
The watch on the Aisne 5
The taking of Neuville St. Vaast 12
French infantry going into action 13
Dragoons going into action 14
The effect of shrapnel from a French “seventy-five” on a German
battery 15
French 155-millimetre gun shelling the German trenches on the Aisne 18
French artillery officers, in an observatory on the Aisne, watching
the effect of shell-fire on the German trenches 19
In an underground first-aid station 30
Zouaves carrying a German position in the Belgian sand-dunes by
storm 31
In the Argonne 38
An observing officer directing the fire of a French battery three
miles behind him 39
The mass before the battle 54
What a 38-centimetre shell, fired from a gun twenty-three miles
away, did in Dunkirk 55
London buses at the front 64
British field-kitchens on the march in Flanders 65
Machine-gun squad wearing masks as a protection against the
asphyxiating gas with which the Germans precede their attacks 84
A British battery in action 85
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────
“Bodies, long months dead, rotting amid the wire │_Group_
entanglements” │ 86
“Imagine what it must be like to sleep in a hole in the│
earth, into which you have to crawl on all fours, │ „
like an animal into its lair” │ „
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────
French high-explosive shells bursting on the German trenches 87
In a bomb-proof gun-pit 98
French trenches on the Somme 99
In the French trenches on the Yser 100
Campaigning in the Vosges 101
What the Germans did to the church at Ribécourt 106
On the summit of the Vosges 107
On the Lac Noir 114
The penalty for treason 115
Troglodyte dwellings in Alsace 124
The straggling columns of unkempt, unshaven men were in striking
contrast to the helmeted giants on gigantic horses who guarded
them 125
In the trenches in Alsace 136
Convoy of German prisoners guarded by Moroccan Spahis 137
A French smoke bomb 140
With hand-grenades in the trenches 141
Chevaux-de-frise and movable entanglements 150
Taking precautions against a gas attack 151
The battle-field of Champagne 154
Bringing in the wounded during the battle of Champagne 155
The battle of Champagne 166
The battle-field of Champagne, showing the French high-explosive
shells bursting on the German trenches 167
Fighting in a quarrel that is not his own 172
The first-line German trenches captured by the French in Champagne 173
This crater, seventy feet deep and twice that in diameter, was
caused by the explosion of a mine. In the terrific blast five
hundred Germans perished 174
German officers captured during the battle of Champagne 175
The price of victory 176
Instruction against gas attacks 177
“Men were at work rolling up the barbed wire in the captured German
entanglements” 180
The thousands upon thousands of empty brass shell-cases with which
the battle-fields are strewn are collected and sent back to the
factory for reloading 181
Mounted on the German trench walls were revolving steel turrets
containing quick-firing guns 182
“Brown-skinned men from North Africa in turbans and burnooses” 183
Motor-buses with wire-netting tops filled with carrier pigeons 184
German prisoners came by, carrying on their shoulders stretchers on
which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men 185
Lunéville from an aeroplane 200
French antiaircraft gun in action against a German aeroplane 201
When the chickens come home to roost 206
Antiaircraft guns, posted outside the towns, are ready to give a
warm reception to an aerial intruder 207
“Two soldiers lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him between
interminable walls of brown earth to the dressing-station” 236
Unloading wounded at a hospital in northern France 237
Red Cross men getting wounded out of a bombarded town in Flanders 244
Bringing in the harvest of the guns 245
“Every house and farmyard for miles around was filled with wounded
and still they came streaming in” 250
“The paths of glory lead——” 251
_All illustrations but those specifically acknowledged were taken by the
Photographic Service of the French Armies and are here reproduced by
special permission._
VIVE LA FRANCE!
I
IN THE FIELD WITH THE FRENCH
Before going to France I was told that the French were very stingy with
their war. I was told that the only fighting I would be permitted to see
would be on moving-picture screens. I was assured that war
correspondents were about as welcome as the small-pox. But I found that
I had been misinformed. So far as I am concerned they have been as
generous with their war as a Kentucky colonel is with mint-juleps. They
have, in fact, been so willing to let me get close up to where things
were happening that, on one or two occasions, it looked as though I
would never see the Statue of Liberty again. I do not wish to give the
impression, however, that these facilities for flirting with sudden
death are handed out promiscuously to all who apply for them. To obtain
me permission to see the French fighting machine in action required the
united influence of three Cabinet Ministers, a British peer, two
ambassadors, a score of newspapers—and the patience of Job.
Unless you have attempted to pierce it, it is impossible to comprehend
the marvellous veil of secrecy which the Allied Governments have cast
over their military operations. I wonder if you, who will read this,
realize that, though the German trenches can be reached by motor-car in
ninety minutes from the Rue de la Paix, it is as impossible for an
unauthorized person to get within sound, much less within sight, of them
as it would be for a tourist to stroll into Buckingham Palace and have a
friendly chat with King George. The good old days in Belgium, when the
correspondents went flitting light-heartedly about the zone of
operations on bicycles and in taxicabs and motor-cars, have passed,
never to return. Imagine a battle in which more men were engaged and the
results of which were more momentous than Waterloo, Gettysburg, and
Sedan combined—a battle in which Europe lost more men than the North
lost in the whole of the Civil War—being fought at, let us say, New
Haven, Conn., in December, and the people of New York and Boston not
knowing the details of that battle, the names of the regiments engaged,
the losses, or, indeed, the actual result, until the following March. It
is, in fact, not the slightest exaggeration to say that the people of
Europe knew more about the wars that were fought on the South African
veldt and on the Manchurian steppes than they do about this, the
greatest of all wars, which is being fought literally at their front
doors. So that when a correspondent does succeed in penetrating the veil
of mystery, when he obtains permission to see with his own eyes
something of what is happening on that five-hundred-mile-long
slaughter-house and cesspool combined which is called “the front,” he
has every excuse for self-congratulation.
When the Ministry of War had reluctantly issued me the little yellow
card, with my photograph pasted on it, which, so far as this war is
concerned, is the equivalent of Aladdin’s lamp and the magic carpet put
together, and I had become for the time being the guest of the nation,
my path was everywhere made smooth before me. I was ciceroned by a
staff-officer in a beautiful sky-blue uniform, and other officers were
waiting to explain things to me in the various divisions through which
we passed. We travelled by motor-car, with a pilot-car ahead and a
baggage-car behind, and we went so fast that it took two people to tell
about it, one to shout, “Here they come!” and another, “There they go!”
[Illustration:
French trenches in the sand-dunes of the Belgian littoral.
Here begins that four-hundred-mile-long line of trenches which
stretches across Europe like a monstrous and deadly snake.
]
Leaving Paris, white and beautiful in the spring sunshine, behind us, we
tore down the historic highway which still bears the title of the Route
de Flandre, down which countless thousands of other men had hastened, in
bygone centuries, to the fighting in the north. The houses of the city
thinned and disappeared, and we came to open fields across which
writhed, like monstrous yellow serpents, the zigzag lines of trenches.
The whole countryside from the Aisne straightaway to the walls of Paris
is one vast network of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements, and, even
in the improbable event of the enemy breaking through the present line,
he would be little better off than he was before. The fields between the
trenches were being ploughed by women, driving sleek white oxen, but the
furrows were scarcely ever straight, for every few yards they would turn
aside to avoid a turf-covered mound surmounted by a rude cross and a
scarlet kepi. For half a hundred miles this portion of France is one
vast cemetery, for it was here that von Kluck made his desperate attempt
to break through to Paris, and it was here that Joffre, in the greatest
battle of all time, drove the German legions back across the Marne and
ended their dream of entering the French capital. We whirled through
villages whose main streets are lined with the broken, blackened shells
of what had once been shops and dwellings. At once I felt at home, for
with this sort of thing I had grown only too familiar in Belgium during
the earlier days of the war. But here the Germans were either careless
or in a hurry, for they had left many buildings standing. In Belgium
they made a more finished job of it. Nothing better illustrates the
implicit confidence which the French people have in their army, and in
its ultimate success, than the fact that in all these towns through
which we passed the people were hard at work rebuilding their shattered
homes, though the strokes of their hammers were echoed by the sullen
boom of German cannon. To me there was something approaching the sublime
in these impoverished peasants turning with stout hearts and smiling
faces to the rebuilding of their homes and the retilling of their
fields. To these patient, toil-worn men and women I lift my hat in
respect and admiration. They, no less than their sons and husbands and
brothers in the trenches, are fighting the battles of France.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
The watch on the Aisne.
“On that four-hundred-mile-long slaughter-house which is called ‘the
front.’”
]
As we approached the front the traditional brick-red trousers and kepis
still worn by the second-line men gave way to the new uniform of
silvery-blue—the color of early morning. There were soldiers everywhere.
Every town and hamlet through which we passed was alive with them. The
highways were choked with troops of all arms; cuirassiers, with their
mediæval steel helmets and breastplates linen-covered; dragoons, riding
under thickets of gleaming lances; zouaves in short blue jackets and
baggy red breeches; spahis in turbans and Senegalese in tarbooshes and
Moroccans in burnooses; _chasseurs d’Afrique_ in sky-blue and scarlet;
infantry of the line in all the shades of blue that can be produced by
dyes and by the weather; mile-long strings of motor transports;
field-batteries; pontoon trains; balloon corps; ambulances with staring
scarlet crosses painted on their canvas covers—all the nuts and bolts
and springs and screws which go to compose what has become, after months
of testing and improvements, as efficient a killing machine as the world
has ever seen. And it is, I am convinced, eventually going to do the
business. It struck me as having all, or nearly all, of the merits of
the German organization _with the human element added_.
When only a short distance in the rear of the firing-line we left the
car and proceeded on foot down a winding country road which debouched
quite suddenly into a great, saucer-shaped valley. Its gentle slopes
were checkered with the brown squares of fresh-ploughed fields and the
green ones of sprouting grain. From beyond a near-by ridge came the
mutter of artillery, and every now and then there appeared against the
turquoise sky what looked like a patch of cotton-wool but was in reality
bursting shrapnel. The far end of the valley was filled with what
appeared at first glance to be a low-hanging cloud of gray-blue mist,
but which, as we drew nearer, resolved itself into dense masses of
troops drawn up in review formation—infantry at the right, cavalry at
the left, and guns in the centre. I had heard much of the invisible
qualities of the new field uniform of the French Army, but I had
heretofore believed it to be greatly inferior to the German greenish
gray. But I have changed my mind. At three hundred yards twenty thousand
men could scarcely be distinguished from the landscape. The only
colorful note was struck by the dragoons, who still retain their
suicidal uniform of scarlet breeches, blue tunic, and the helmet with
its horse-tail plume, though a concession has been made to practicality
by covering the latter with tan linen. The majority of the French
woollen mills being in the region held by the Germans, it has been
possible to provide only a portion of the army with the new uniform. As
a result of this shortage of cloth, thousands of soldiers have had
recourse to the loose corduroy trousers common among the peasantry,
while for the territorials almost any sort of a jacket will pass muster
provided it is of a neutral color and has the regimental numerals on the
collar. Those soldiers who can afford to provide their own uniforms
almost invariably have them made of khaki, cut after the more practical
British pattern, with cap-covers of the same material. Owing to this
latitude in the matter of clothing, the French army during the first
year of the war presented an extraordinarily variegated and nondescript
appearance, though this lack of uniformity is gradually being remedied.
At three o’clock a rolling cloud of dust suddenly appeared on the road
from Compiègne, and out of it tore a long line of military cars,
travelling at express-train speed. All save one were in war coats of
elephant gray. The exception was a low-slung racer painted a
canary-yellow. Tearing at top speed up the valley, it came to a sudden
stop before the centre of the mile-long line of soldiery. A mile of
fighting men stiffened to attention; a mile of rifle barrels formed a
hedge of burnished steel; the drums gave the long roll and the thirteen
ruffles; the colors swept the ground; the massed bands burst into the
splendid strains of the _Marseillaise_, and a little man,
gray-mustached, gray-bearded, inclined to stoutness, but with the
unmistakable carriage of a soldier, descended from the yellow car and,
followed by a staff in uniforms of light blue, of dark blue, of tan, of
green, of scarlet, walked briskly down the motionless lines. I was
having the unique privilege of seeing a President of France reviewing a
French army almost within sight of the invader and actually within sound
of his guns. It was under almost parallel circumstances that, upward of
half a century ago, on the banks of the Rappahannock, another President
of another mighty republic reviewed another army, which was likewise
fighting the battles of civilization.
Raymond Poincaré is by no means an easy man to describe. He is the only
French President within my memory who looks the part of ruler. In his
person are centred, as it were, the aspirations of France, for he is a
native of Lorraine. He was a captain of Alpine Chasseurs in his younger
days and shows the result of his military training in his erect and
vigorous bearing. Were you to see him apart from his official
surroundings you might well take him, with his air of energy and
authority, for a great employer or a captain of industry. Take twenty
years from the age of Andrew Carnegie, trim his beard to a point, throw
his shoulders back and his chest out, and you will have as good an idea
as I can give you of the war-time President of France.
At the President’s right walked a thickset, black mustached man whose
rather shabby blue serge suit and broad-brimmed black slouch hat were in
strange contrast to the brilliant uniforms about him. Yet this man in
the wrinkled clothes, with the unmilitary bearing, exercised more power
than the President and all the officers who followed him; a word from
him could make or break generals, could move armies; he was Millerand,
War Minister of France.
After passing down the lines and making a minute inspection of the
soldiers and their equipment, the President took his stand in front of
the grouped standards, and the officers and men who were to be decorated
for gallantry ranged themselves before him, some with bandaged heads,
some with their arms in slings, one hobbling painfully along on
crutches. Stepping forward, as the Minister of War read off their names
from a list, the President pinned to the tunic of each man the coveted
bit of ribbon and enamel and kissed him on either cheek, while the
troops presented arms and the massed bands played the anthem. On general
principles I should think that the President would rebel at having to
kiss so many men, even though they are heroes and have been freshly
shaved for the occasion.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurasse._
The taking of Neuville St. Vaast.
French infantry engaged in house-to-house fighting.
]
I might mention in passing that the decoration most highly prized by the
French soldier is not, as is popularly supposed, the Legion of Honor,
which, like the Iron Cross, has greatly depreciated because of its
wholesale distribution (it is the policy of the German military
authorities, I believe, to give the Iron Cross to one in every twenty
men), but the Médaille Militaire, which, like the Victoria Cross and the
Prussian decoration, Pour le Mérite, is awarded only for deeds of the
most conspicuous bravery. The Médaille Militaire, moreover, can be won
only by privates and non-commissioned officers or by generals, though
the Croix de Guerre, the little bronze cross which signifies that the
wearer has been mentioned in despatches, is awarded to all ranks and
occasionally to women, among the _décorées_ being Madame Alexis Carrel,
the wife of the famous surgeon.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
French infantry going into action.
“These were the famous _poilus_, the bearded ones, ... a moving cloud
of grayish blue under shifting, shimmering, slanting lines of
steel.”
]
The picturesque business of recognizing the brave being concluded, the
review of the troops began. Topping a rise, they swept down upon us in
line of column—a moving cloud of grayish blue under shifting,
shimmering, slanting lines of steel. Company after company, regiment
after regiment, brigade after brigade, swept past, businesslike as a
locomotive, implacable as a trip-hammer, irresistible as a steam-roller,
moving with mechanical precision to the exultant strains of the march of
the _Sambre et Meuse_. These were the famous _poilus_, the bearded ones,
the men with hair on their chests. Their uniforms were not immaculate.
They were faded by wind and rain and sometimes stained with blood. On
their boots was the mud of the battle-fields along the Aisne. Fresh from
the trenches though they were, they were as pink-cheeked as athletes,
and they marched with the buoyancy of men in high spirits and in perfect
health. Here before me was a section of that wall of steel which stands
unbroken between Western Europe and the Teutonic hordes. Hard on the
heels of the infantry came the guns—the famous “75’s”—a score of
batteries, well horsed and well equipped, at a spanking trot. A little
space to let the foot and guns get out of the way, and then we heard the
wild, shrill clangor of the cavalry trumpets pealing the charge. Over
the rise they came, helmeted giants on gigantic horses. The earth shook
beneath their gallop. The scarlet breeches of the riders gleamed fiery
in the sunlight; the horsehair plumes of the helmets floated out behind;
the upraised sword-blades formed a forest of glistening steel. As they
went thundering past us in a whirlwind of dust and color they rose in
their stirrups, and high above the clank of steel and the trample of
hoofs came the deep-mouthed Gallic battle-cry: “_Vive la France! Vive la
France!_”.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Captain John W. Barker, U. S. A._
Dragoons going into action.
“We heard the wild, shrill clangor of the cavalry trumpets pealing the
charge.... Over the rise they came, helmeted giants on gigantic
horses.”
]
To have had a battery of French artillery go into action and pour a
torrent of steel-cased death upon the enemy’s trenches for one’s special
benefit is, so far as I am aware, a courtesy which the General Staff has
seen fit to extend to no other correspondent. That the guns were of the
new 105-millimetre model, which are claimed to be as much superior to
the “75’s” as the latter are to all other field artillery, made the
exhibition all the more interesting. The road which we had to take in
order to reach this particular battery leads for several miles across an
open plateau within full view of the German positions. As we approached
this danger zone the staff-officer who accompanied me spoke to our
driver, who opened up the throttle, and we took that stretch of exposed
highway as a frightened cat takes the top of a backyard fence. “Merely a
matter of precaution,” explained my companion. “Sometimes when the
Germans see a car travelling along this road they send a few shells
across in the hope of getting a general. There’s no use in taking
unnecessary chances.” Though I didn’t say so, it struck me that I was in
considerably more danger from the driving than I was from a German
shell.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
The effect of shrapnel from a French “seventy-five” on a German
battery.
]
Leaving the car in the shelter of the ridge on which the battery was
posted, we ascended the steep hillside on foot. I noticed that the slope
we were traversing was pitted with miniature craters, any one of which
was large enough to hold a barrel. “It might be as well to hurry across
here,” the artillery officer who was acting as our guide casually
remarked. “Last evening the Germans dropped eight hundred shells on this
field that we are crossing, and one never knows, of course, when they
will do it again.”
Part way up the slope we entered what appeared to be a considerable
grove of young trees. Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered that
it was not a natural grove but an artificial one, hundreds of saplings
having been brought from elsewhere and set upright in the ground. Soon I
saw the reason, for in a little cleared space in the heart of this
imitation wood, mounted on what looked not unlike gigantic step-ladders,
were two field-guns with their muzzles pointing skyward. “These guns are
for use against aircraft,” explained the officer in charge. “The German
airmen are constantly trying to locate our batteries, and in order to
discourage their inquisitiveness we’ve put these guns in position.” The
guns were of the regulation _soixante-quinze_ pattern, but so elevated
that the wheels were at the height of a man’s head from the ground, the
barrels thus being inclined at such an acute angle that, by means of a
sort of turntable on which the platforms were mounted, the gunners were
able to sweep the sky. “This,” said the artillery officer, calling my
attention to a curious-looking instrument, “is the telemeter. By means
of it we are able to obtain the exact altitude of the aircraft at which
we are firing, and thus know at what elevation to set our guns. It is as
simple as it is ingenious. There are two apertures, one for each eye. In
one the aircraft is seen right side up; in the other it is inverted. By
turning this thumbscrew the images are brought together. When one is
superimposed exactly over the other the altitude is shown in metres on
this dial below. Then we open on the airman with shrapnel.” Since these
guns were placed in position the German air-scouts have found it
extremely hazardous to play peek-a-boo from the clouds.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
French 155-millimetre gun shelling the German trenches on the Aisne.
“The guns were so ingeniously masked that fifty feet away one could
detect nothing about that apparently innocent clump of tangled
vegetation to suggest that it concealed an amazing quantity of
potential death.”
]
A few minutes’ walk along the ridge brought us to the battery of 105’s,
which was the real object of our visit. The guns were not posted on the
summit of the ridge, as a layman might suppose, but a quarter of a mile
behind it, so that the ridge itself, a dense forest, and the river Aisne
intervened between the battery and the German position. The guns were
sunk in pits so ingeniously masked with shrubs and branches that the
keenest-eyed airman, flying low overhead, would have seen nothing to
arouse his suspicions. Fifty feet away one could detect nothing about
that apparently innocent clump of tangled vegetation to suggest that it
concealed an amazing quantity of potential death. This battery had been
here through the winter, and the gunners had utilized the time, which
hung heavy on their hands, in making themselves comfortable and in
beautifying their surroundings. With the taste and ingenuity so
characteristic of the French, they had transformed their battery into a
sylvan grotto. The earthen walls of the gun-pits were kept in place by
deftly woven wattles, and the paths leading to them had borders of white
sand, on which were patriotic mottoes in colored pebbles. Scattered
about were ingeniously constructed rustic seats and tables. Within ten
feet of one of the great gray guns a bed of hyacinths made the air heavy
with their fragrance. The next gun-pit was banked about with yellow
crocus. Hanging from the arbor which shielded another of the steel
monsters were baskets made of moss and bark, in which were growing
violets. At a rustic table, under a sort of pergola, a soldier was
painting a picture in water-colors. It was a good picture. I saw it
afterward on exhibition in the Salon des Humoristes in Paris. A few
yards back of each gun-emplacement were cave-like shelters, dug in the
hillside, in which the men sleep, and in which they take refuge during
the periodic shell-storms which visit them. Those into which I went were
warm and dry and not at all uncomfortable. Over the entrance to one of
these troglodyte dwellings was a sign announcing that it was the Villa
des Roses.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
French artillery officers, in an observatory on the Aisne, watching
the effect of shell-fire on the German trenches.
“From these secret _observatoires_ the French observers keep an
unceasing watch on the movements of the enemy and, by means of
telephones, direct and control the fire of their own batteries with
incredible accuracy.”
]
“Do the Germans know the position of these guns?” I asked the battery
commander.
“Not exactly, though they have, of course, a pretty general idea.”
“Then you are not troubled by German shells,” I remarked.
“Indeed we are,” was the answer. “Though they have not been able to
locate us exactly, they know that we are somewhere at the back of this
ridge, so every now and then they attempt to clear us out by means of
progressive fire. That is, they start in at the summit, and by gradually
increasing the elevation of their guns, systematically sweep the entire
reverse slope of the ridge, so that some of their shells are almost
certain to drop in on us. Do you appreciate, however, that, though we
have now been in this same position for nearly six months, though not a
day goes by that we are not under fire, and though a number of my men
have been killed and wounded, we have never seen the target at which we
are firing and we have never seen a German soldier?”
A ten-minute walk across the open tableland which lay in front of the
battery, and which forms the summit of the ridge, then through a dense
bit of forest, and we found ourselves at the entrance to one of those
secret _observatoires_ from which the French observers keep an unceasing
watch on the movements of the enemy, and by means of telephones, control
the fire of their own batteries with incredible accuracy. This
particular _observatoire_ occupied the mouth of a cave on the
precipitous hillside above the Aisne, being rendered invisible by a
cleverly arranged screen of bushes. Pinned to the earthen walls were
contour maps and fire-control charts; powerful telescopes mounted on
tripods brought the German trenches across the river so close to us
that, had a German soldier been incautious enough to show himself, we
could almost have seen the spike upon his helmet; and a military
telephonist with receivers clamped to his ears sat at a switchboard and
pushed buttons or pulled out pegs just as the telephone girls do in New
York hotels. The chief difference was that this operator, instead of
ordering a bellhop to take ice-water and writing-paper to Room 511,
would tell the commander of a battery, four or five or six miles away,
to send over to a German trench, which he would designate by number, a
few rounds of shrapnel or high explosive.
An officer in a smart uniform of dark blue with the scarlet facings of
the artillery beckoned to me to come forward, and indicated a small
opening in the screen of branches.
“Look through there,” he said, “but please be extremely careful not to
show yourself or to shake the branches. That hillside opposite us is
dotted with the enemy’s _observatoires_, just as this hillside is dotted
with ours, and they are constantly sweeping this ridge with powerful
glasses in the hope of spotting us and shelling us out. Thus far they’ve
not been able to locate us. We’ve had better luck, however. We’ve
located two of their fire-control stations, and put them out of
business.”
As I was by no means anxious to have a storm of shrapnel bursting about
my head, I was careful not to do anything which might attract the
attention of a German with a telescope glued to his eye. Peering
cautiously through the opening in the screen of bushes, I found myself
looking down upon the winding course of the Aisne; to the southwest I
could catch a glimpse of the pottery roofs of Soissons, while from the
farther bank of the river rose the gentle slopes which formed the
opposite side of the river valley. These slopes were everywhere slashed
and scarred by zigzag lines of yellow which I knew to be the German
trenches. But, though I knew that those trenches sheltered an invading
army, not a sign of life was to be seen. Barring a few cows grazing
contentedly in a pasture, the landscape was absolutely deserted. There
was something strangely oppressive and uncanny about this great stretch
of fertile countryside, dotted here and there with white-walled cottages
and clumps of farm buildings, but with not a single human being to be
seen. On the other side of the opposite ridge I knew that the German
batteries were posted, just as the French guns were stationed out of
sight at the back of the ridge on which I stood. This artillery warfare
is, after all, only a gigantic edition of the old-fashioned game of
hide-and-seek. The chief difference being that when you catch sight of
your opponent, instead of saying politely, “I see you!” you try to kill
him with a three-inch shell.
A soldier set a tripod in position and on it carefully adjusted a
powerful telescope. The colonel motioned me to look through it, and
suddenly the things that had looked like sinuous yellow lines became
recognizable as marvellously constructed earthworks.
“Now,” said the colonel, “focus your glass on that trench just above the
ruined farmhouse and I will show you what our gunners can do.” After
consulting a chart with innumerable radiating blue and scarlet lines
which was pinned to a drafting-table, and making some hasty calculations
with a pencil, he gave a few curt orders to a junior officer who sat at
a telephone switchboard with receivers clamped to his ears. The young
officer spoke some cabalistic figures into the transmitter and concluded
with the order: “_Tir rapide._”
“Now, Monsieur Powell,” called the colonel, “watch the trenches.” A
moment later, from somewhere behind the ridge at the back of us, came in
rapid succession six splitting crashes—_bang! bang! bang! bang! bang!
bang!_ A fraction of a second later I saw six puffs of black smoke
suddenly appear against one of the yellow lines on the distant hillside;
six fountains of earth shot high into the air.
“Right into the trenches!” exclaimed the colonel, who was kneeling
beside me with his glasses glued to his eyes. “Watch once more.” Again
six splitting crashes, six distant puffs of smoke, and, floating back to
us a moment later, six muffled detonations.
“The battery that has just fired is four miles from those trenches,”
remarked the colonel casually. “Not so bad, eh?”
“It’s marvellous,” I answered, but all the time I was wondering how many
lives had been snuffed out for my benefit that morning on the distant
hillside, how many men with whom I have no quarrel had been maimed for
life, how many women had been left husbandless, how many children
fatherless.
“I do not wish to hasten your departure, Monsieur Powell,” apologized
the colonel, “but if you wish to get back to your car without annoyance,
I think that you had better be starting. We’ve stirred up the Boches,
and at any moment now their guns may begin to answer.”
He knew what he was talking about, did that colonel. In fact, we had
delayed our departure too long, for just as we reached the edge of the
wood, and started across the open plateau which crowns the summit,
something hurtled through the air above the tree-tops with a sound
between a moan and a snarl and exploded with a crash like a thousand
cannon crackers set off together a few yards in front of us. Before the
echoes of the first had time to die away came another and yet another.
They burst to the right of us, to the left of us, seemingly all around
us. We certainly had stirred up the Germans. For a few minutes we were
in a very warm corner, and I am no stranger to shell-fire, either. At
first we decided to make a dash for it across the plateau, but a shell
which burst in the undergrowth not thirty feet ahead induced us to
change our minds, and we precipitately retreated to the nearest
bomb-proof. The next half-hour we spent snugly and securely several feet
below the surface of the earth, while shrapnel whined overhead like
bloodhounds seeking their prey. Have you ever heard shrapnel by any
chance? No? Well, it sounds as much as anything else like a winter gale
howling through the branches of a pine-tree. It is a moan, a groan, a
shriek, and a wail rolled into one, and when the explosion comes it
sounds as though some one had touched off a stick of dynamite under a
grand piano. And it is not particularly cheering to know that the ones
you hear do not harm you, and that it is the ones you do not have time
to hear that send you to the cemetery. The French artillery officers
tell me that the German ammunition has noticeably deteriorated of late.
Well, perhaps. Still, I hadn’t noticed it. It was thirty minutes before
the storm of shrapnel slackened and it was safe to start for the car. We
had a mile of open field to cross with shells still occasionally
falling. I felt like a man wearing a silk hat who has just passed a gang
of boys engaged in making snowballs. In a lifetime largely made up of
interesting experiences, that exhibition of French gunnery will always
stand out as one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. But
all the way back to headquarters I kept wondering about those men in the
trenches where the shells had fallen, and about the women and children
who are waiting and watching and praying for them over there across the
Rhine.
I had expressed a wish to visit Soissons, and, upon communicating with
division headquarters, permission was granted and the necessary orders
issued. Before we started, however, I was told quite frankly that the
military authorities accepted no responsibility for the consequences of
the proposed excursion, for, though the town was in the possession of
the French, it was under almost constant bombardment by the Germans. In
order to get the setting of the picture clearly in your mind, you must
picture two parallel ranges of hills, separated by a wonderfully fertile
valley, perhaps three miles in width, down which meanders, with many
twists and hairpin turns, the silver ribbon which is the Aisne. On its
north bank, at a gentle bend in the river, stands the quaint old town of
Soissons, so hoary with antiquity that its earlier history is lost in
the mists of tradition. Of its normal population of fifteen thousand,
when I was there only a few score remained, and those only because they
had no other place to go.
A sandstone ridge which rises abruptly from the south bank of the river
directly opposite Soissons was held by the French, and from its shelter
their batteries spat unceasing defiance at the Germans, under General
von Heeringen, whose trenches lined the heights on the other side of the
river and immediately back of the town. From dawn to dark and often
throughout the night, the screaming messengers of death crisscrossed
above the red-tiled roofs of Soissons and served to make things
interesting for the handful of inhabitants who remained. Every now and
then the German gunners, apparently for no reason save pure deviltry,
would drop a few shells into the middle of the town. They argued, no
doubt, that it would keep the townsfolk from becoming ennuied and give
them something to occupy their minds.
The ridge on the French side of the river is literally honeycombed with
quarries, tunnels, and caverns, many of these subterranean chambers
being as large and as curiously formed as the grottoes in the Mammoth
Cave. Being weather-proof as well as shell-proof, the French had turned
them to excellent account, utilizing them for barracks, ammunition
stores, fire-control stations, hospitals, and even stables. In fact, I
can recall few stranger sights than that of a long line of helmeted
horsemen, comprising a whole squadron of dragoons, disappearing into the
mouth of one of these caverns like a gigantic snake crawling into its
lair.
Leaving the car three miles from the outskirts of Soissons, we made our
way through dense undergrowth up a hillside until we came quite
unexpectedly upon the yawning mouth of a tunnel, which, I surmised,
passed completely under the backbone of the ridge. Groping our way for
perhaps an eighth of a mile through inky blackness, we suddenly emerged,
amid a blinding glare of sunlight, into just such another observing
station as we had visited that morning farther up the Aisne. This
_observatoire_, being in the mouth of the tunnel, could not be seen from
above, while a screen of branches and foliage concealed it from the
German observers across the river. The officer in command at this point
was anxious to give us a demonstration of the accuracy with which his
gunners could land on the German solar plexus, but when he learned that
we were going into the town he changed his mind.
“They’ve been quiet all day,” he explained, “and if you are going across
the river it’s just as well not to stir them up. You’ll probably get a
little excitement in any event, for the Boches usually shell the town
for an hour or so at sunset before knocking off for supper. We call it
‘The Evening Prayer.’”
[Illustration:
In an underground first-aid station.
The caves and grottoes in the cliffs along the Aisne are utilized for
first-aid dressing-stations.
]
Slipping through an opening in the screen of foliage which masked the
_observatoire_, we found ourselves at the beginning of a _boyau_, or
communication trench, which led diagonally down the face of the hillside
to the river. Down this we went, sometimes on hands and knees and always
stooping, for as long as we were on the side of the hill we were within
sight of the German positions, and to have shown our heads above the
trench would have attracted the bullets of the German sharpshooters. And
a second is long enough for a bullet to do its business. Emerging from
the _boyau_ at the foot of the hill, we crossed the river by an ancient
stone bridge and for a mile or more followed a cobble-paved highroad
which ran between rows of workmen’s cottages which had been wrecked by
shell-fire. Some had shattered roofs and the plastered walls of others
were pockmarked with bullets, for here the fighting had been desperate
and bloody. But over the garden walls strayed blossom-laden branches of
cherry, peach, and apple trees. The air was heavy with their fragrance.
Black-and-white cattle grazed contentedly knee-deep in lush green grass.
Pigeons cooed and chattered on the housetops. By an open window an old
woman with a large white cat in her lap sat knitting. As she knitted she
looked out across the blossoming hillsides to the sky-line where the
invaders lay intrenched and waiting. I wondered what she was thinking
about. She must have remembered quite distinctly when the Germans came
to Soissons for the first time, five and forty years before, and how
they shot the townsmen in the public square. A few years ago the people
of Soissons unveiled a monument to those murdered citizens. When this
war is over they will have more names to add to those already carved on
its base.
[Illustration:
Zouaves carrying a German position in the Belgian sand-dunes by storm.
]
It is not a cheerful business strolling through a shell-shattered and
deserted town. You feel depressed and speak in hushed tones, as though
you were in a house that had been visited by death as, indeed, you are.
In the Place de la République we found a score or so of infantrymen on
duty, these being the only soldiers that we saw in the town. Along the
main thoroughfares nearly every shop was closed and its windows
shuttered. Some tobacconists and two or three cafés remained bravely
open, but little business was being done. I do not think that I am
exaggerating when I say that every fourth or fifth house we passed
showed evidences of the German bombardment. One shell, I remember, had
exploded in the show-window of a furniture store and had demolished a
gilt-and-red-plush parlor suite. The only thing unharmed was a sign
which read “Cheap and a bargain.”
In the very heart of Soissons stands the huge bulk of the magnificent
twelfth-century cathedral, its massive tower rising skyward like a
finger pointing toward heaven. There are few nobler piles in France.
Repeated rappings at a door in the churchyard wall brought the _curé_, a
white-haired, kindly faced giant of a man. Under his guidance we entered
the cathedral, or rather what remains of it, for its famous Gothic
windows are now but heaps of shattered glass, the splendid nave is open
to the sky, half the roof has been torn away, the pulpit with its
exquisite carvings has been splintered by a shell, and the massive
columns have been chipped and scarred. Carvings which were the pride of
master craftsmen long centuries dead have been damaged past repair. In
the floor of the nave yawns a hole large enough to hold a horse. Around
the statues which flank the altar, and which are too large to move, have
been raised barricades of sand-bags. And this, mind you, in the house of
Him who was the Apostle of Peace!
While the _curé_ was pointing out to us the ruined beauties of his
celebrated windows, something passed overhead with a wail like a lost
soul. A moment later came an explosion which made the walls of the
cathedral tremble. “Ah,” remarked the _curé_ unconcernedly, “they’ve
begun again. I thought it must be nearly time. They bombard the
cathedral every evening between five and seven.”
As he finished speaking, another shell came whining over the housetops
and burst with a prodigious racket in the street outside.
“How far away was that one?” I asked one of the officers.
“Only about a hundred metres,” was the careless reply.
As unmoved as though at a church supper, the _curé_ placidly continued
his recital of the cathedral’s departed glories, reeling off the names
of the saints and martyrs who lie buried beneath the floor of its nave,
his recital being punctuated at thirty-second intervals by explosions,
each a little louder than the one preceding. Finally a shell came so low
that I thought that it was going through the roof. It came so near, in
fact, that I suggested that it was getting on toward dinner time and
that we really ought to be on our way. But the _curé_ was not to be
hurried. He had had no visitors for nearly a year and he was determined
to make the most of us. He insisted on showing us that cathedral from
sacristy to belfry, and if he thought that we were missing anything he
carefully explained it all over again.
“Why do you stay on here, father?” I asked him. “A shell is likely to
drop in on you at any moment.”
“That is as God wills, monsieur,” was the quiet answer. “A captain does
not leave his ship in a storm. I have my people to look after, for they
are as helpless as children and look to me for advice. And the wounded
also. We have turned the sacristy, as you saw, into a dressing-station.
Yes, there is much to do. If a shell comes it will find me at my post of
duty doing what I may to serve God and France.”
So we went away and left him standing there alone in the doorway of his
shattered cathedral, a picturesque and gallant figure, with his white
hair coming down upon his shoulders and his tall figure wrapped in the
black soutane. To such men as these the people of France owe a debt that
they can never repay. Though they wear cassocks instead of cuirasses,
though they carry Bibles instead of bayonets, they are none the less
real soldiers—soldiers of the Lord.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
In the Argonne.