troops just as the smoke from a destroyer screens the movements of a
battleship.
]
Though the French and German positions in Alsace are rarely less than a
hundred yards apart and usually considerably more, there is one point on
the line, known as La Fontenelle, where, owing to a peculiar rocky
formation, _the French and German trenches are within six yards of each
other_. The only reason one side does not blow up the other by means of
mines is because the vein of rock which separates them is too hard to
tunnel through. In cases where the trenches are exceptionally close
together, the men have the comfort of knowing that they are at least
safe from shell-fire, for, as the battery commanders are perfectly aware
that the slightest error in calculating the range, or the least
deterioration in the rifling of the guns, would result in their shells
landing among their own men, they generally play safe and concentrate
their fire on the enemy’s second-line trenches instead of on the
first-line. The fighting in these close-up positions has consequently
degenerated into a warfare of bombs, hand-grenades, poison-gas, burning
oil, and other methods reminiscent of the Middle Ages. As a protection
against bombs and hand-grenades, some of the trenches which I visited
had erected along their parapets ten-foot-high screens of wire netting,
like the back nets of tennis-courts.
[Illustration:
With hand-grenades in the trenches.
“In this war the hand-grenade is king. Beside it the high-power rifle
is a joke.”
]
In this war the hand-grenade is king. Compared with it the high-power
rifle is a joke. The grenadier regiments again deserve the name. For
cleaning out a trench or stopping a massed charge there is nothing like
a well-aimed volley of hand-grenades. I believe that the total failure
of the repeated German attempts to break through on the western front is
due to three causes: the overwhelming superiority of the French
artillery; the French addiction to the use of the bayonet—for the
Germans do not like cold steel; and to the remarkable proficiency of the
French in the use of hand-grenades. The grenade commonly used by the
French is of the “bracelet” type, consisting of a cast-iron ball filled
with explosive. The thrower wears on his wrist a leather loop or
bracelet which is prolonged by a piece of cord about a foot in length
with an iron hook at the end. Just before the grenade is thrown, the
hook is passed through the ring of a friction-pin inside the firing-plug
which closes the iron ball. By a sharp backward turn of the wrist when
the grenade is thrown, the ring, with the friction-pin, held back by the
hook, is torn off, the grenade itself continuing on its brief journey of
destruction. The French also use a primed grenade attached to a sort of
wooden racket, which can be quickly improvised on the spot, and which,
from its form, is popularly known as the “hair-brush.” To acquire
proficiency in the use of grenades requires considerable practise, for
the novice who attempts to throw one of these waspish-tempered missiles
is as likely to blow up his comrades as he is the enemy. So at various
points along the front the French have established bomb-throwing
schools, under competent instructors, where the soldiers are taught the
proper method of throwing grenades, just as, at the winter
training-camps, candidates for the big leagues are taught the proper
method of throwing a baseball.
Some of the grenades are too large to be thrown by hand and so they are
hurled into the enemy’s trenches by various ingenious machines designed
for the purpose. There is, for example, the _sauterelle_, a modern
adaptation of the ancient arbalist, which can toss a bomb the size of a
nail-keg into a trench ninety feet away. Mortars which did good service
in the days of Bertrand du Guesclin have been unearthed from ancient
citadels, and in the trenches are again barking defiance at the enemies
of France. Because of their frog-like appearance, the soldiers have
dubbed them _crapouillots_, and they are used for throwing bombs of the
horned variety, which look more than anything else like snails pushing
their heads out of their shells. Still another type, known as the
_taupia_, consists merely of a German 77-millimetre shell-case with a
touch-hole bored in the base so that it can be fired by a match. This
little improvised mortar, whose name was no doubt coined from the French
word for “mole” (_taupe_) as appropriate to underground warfare, throws
a tin containing two and a quarter pounds of high explosive for a short
distance with considerable accuracy. Still another type of bomb is
hurled from a catapult, which does not differ materially from those
which were used at the siege of Troy. Doubtless the most accurate and
effective of all the bombs used in this trench warfare is the so-called
air-torpedo, a cigar-shaped shell about thirty inches long and weighing
thirty-three pounds, which is fitted with steel fins, like the feathers
on an arrow and for the same purpose. This projectile, which is fired
from a specially designed mortar, has an effective range of five hundred
yards and carries a charge of high explosive sufficient to demolish
everything within a radius of twenty feet. Tens of thousands of these
torpedoes of the air were used during the French offensive in Champagne
and created terrible havoc in the German trenches. But by far the most
imposing of these trench projectiles is the great air-mine, weighing two
hundred and thirty-six pounds and as large as a barrel, which is fired
from an 80-millimetre mountain gun with the wheels removed and mounted
on an oak platform. In the case of both the air-torpedo and the air-mine
the projectile does not enter the barrel of the gun from which it is
fired, but is attached to a tube which alone receives the propulsive
force. At first the various forms of trench mortars—_minenwerfer_, the
Germans call them—were unsatisfactory because they were not accurate and
could not be depended upon, no one being quite sure whether the
resulting explosion was going to occur in the French trenches or in the
German. They have been greatly improved, however, and though no attempt
has been made to give them velocity, they drop their bombs with
reasonable accuracy. You can see them plainly as they end-over-end
toward you, like beer-bottles or beer-kegs coming through the air.
Nor does this by any means exhaust the list of killing devices which
have been produced by this war. There is, for example, the little,
insignificant-looking bomb with wire triggers sticking out from it in
all directions, like the prickers on a horse-chestnut burr. These bombs
are thickly strewn over the ground between the trenches. If the enemy
attempts to charge across that ground some soldier is almost certain to
step on one of those little trigger-wires. To collect that soldier’s
remains it would be necessary to use a pail and shovel. The Germans are
said to dig shallow pools outside their trenches and cement the bottoms
of those pools and fill them with acid, which is masked by boughs or
straw. Any soldiers who stumbled into those pools of acid would have
their feet burned off. This I have not seen, but I have been assured
that it is so. Along certain portions of the front the orthodox
barbed-wire entanglements are giving way to great spirals of heavy
telegraph wire, which, lying loose upon the ground, envelop and hamper
an advancing force like the tentacles of a giant cuttlefish. This wire
comes in coils about three feet in diameter, but instead of unwinding it
the coils are opened out into a sort of spiral cage, which can be rolled
over the tops of the trenches without exposing a man. A bombardment
which would wipe the ordinary barbed-wire entanglement out of existence,
does this new form of obstruction comparatively little harm, while the
wire is so tough and heavy that the soldiers with nippers who precede a
storming-party cannot cut it. Another novel contrivance is the hinged
entanglement, a sort of barbed-wire fence which, when not in use, lies
flat upon the ground, where it is but little exposed to shell-fire, but
which, by means of wires running back to the trenches, can be pulled
upright in case of an attack, so that the advancing troops suddenly find
themselves confronted by a formidable and unexpected barrier. In cases
where the lines are so close together that for men to expose themselves
would mean almost certain death, _chevaux-de-frise_ of steel and wire
are constructed in the shelter of the trenches and pushed over the
parapet with poles. The French troops now frequently advance to the
assault, carrying huge rolls of thick linoleum, which is unrolled and
thrown across the entanglements, thus forming a sort of bridge, by means
of which the attacking force is enabled to cross the river of barbed
wire in front of the German trenches.
It is not safe to assert that anything relating to this war is untrue
merely because it is incredible. I have with my own eyes seen things
which, had I been told about them before the war began, I would have set
down as the imaginings of a disordered mind. Some one asked me if I knew
that the scene-painters of the French theatres had been mobilized and
formed into a battalion for the purpose of painting scenery to mask
gun-positions—and I laughed at the story. Since then I have seen
gun-positions so hidden. Suppose that it is found necessary to post a
battery in the open, where no cover is available. In the ordinary course
of events the German airmen would discover those guns before they had
fired a dozen rounds, and the German batteries would promptly proceed to
put them out of action. So they erect over them a sort of tent, and the
scene-painters are set to work so to paint that tent that, from a little
distance, it cannot be distinguished from the surrounding scenery. If it
is on the Belgian littoral they will paint it to look like a sand-dune.
If it is in the wooded country of Alsace or the Argonne they will so
paint it that, seen from an aeroplane, it will look like a clump of
trees. I have seen a whole row of aeroplane hangars, each of them the
size of a church, so cleverly painted that, from a thousand feet above,
they could not be seen at all. A road over which there is heavy traffic
lies within both range and sight of the enemy’s guns. Anything seen
moving along that road instantly becomes the target for a rain of
shells. So along the side of the road nearest the enemy is raised a
screen of canvas, like those which surround the side-shows at the
circus, but, instead of being decorated with lurid representations of
the Living Skeleton and the Wild Man from Borneo and the Fattest Woman
on Earth, and the Siamese Twins, it is painted to represent a row of
trees such as commonly border French highways. Behind that canvas screen
horse, foot, and guns can then be moved in safety, though the road must
be kept constantly sprinkled so that the suspicions of the German
observers shall not be aroused by a telltale cloud of dust. The
stalking-screen is a device used for approaching big game by sportsmen
the world over. Now the idea has been applied by the French to warfare,
the big game being in this case Germans. The screens are of steel plates
covered with canvas so painted that it looks like a length of trench,
the deception being heightened by sticking to the canvas tufts of grass.
Thus screened from the enemy, two or three men may secretly keep watch
at points considerably in advance of the real trenches, creeping forward
as opportunity offers, pushing their scenery before them. Both sides
have long been daubing field-guns and caissons and other bulky equipment
with all the colors of the rainbow, like a futurist landscape, so that
they assume the properties of a chameleon and become indistinguishable
from the landscape. Now they are painting the faces of the snipers, and
splashing their uniforms and rifle barrels with many colors and tying to
their heads wisps of grass and foliage. But the crowning touch was when
the French began systematically to paint their white horses with
permanganate so as to turn them into less obtrusive browns and sorrels.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
Chevaux-de-frise and movable entanglements.
“Movable entanglements are constructed in the shelter of the trenches
and pushed over the parapet with poles so that the men do not have
to expose themselves.”
]
Hollowed at frequent intervals from the earthen back walls of the
trenches are niches, in each of which is kept a bottle of hyposulphate
of soda and a pail of water. When the yellow cloud which denotes that
the Germans have turned loose their poison-gas comes rolling down upon
them, the soldiers hastily empty the hyposulphate into the water,
saturate in the solution thus formed a pad of gauze which they always
carry with them, fasten it over the mouth and nostrils by means of an
elastic, and, as an additional precaution, draw over the head a bag of
blue linen with a piece of mica set in the front and a draw-string to
pull it tight about the neck. Thus protected and looking strangely like
the hooded familiars of the Inquisition, they are able to remain at
their posts without fear of asphyxiation. But no protection has as yet
been devised against the terrible flame projector which has been
introduced on several portions of the western front by the Germans. It
is a living sheet of flame, caused by a gas believed to be oxyacetylene,
and is probably directed through a powerful air-jet. The pressure of the
air must be enormous, for the flame, which springs from the ground level
and expands into a roaring wave of fire, chars and burns everything
within thirty yards. The flame is, indeed, very like that of the common
blowpipe used by plumbers, but instead of being used upon lead pipe it
is used upon human flesh and bone.
[Illustration:
Taking precautions against a gas attack.
“When the poison-gas comes rolling down upon the trenches the soldiers
fasten over the mouth and nostrils a pad of gauze saturated in a
hyposulphate solution.”
]
But poison-gas and flame projectors are by no means the most devilish of
the devices introduced by the Germans. The soldiers of the Kaiser have
now adopted the weapon of the jealous prostitute and are throwing
vitriol. The acid is contained in fragile globes or phials which break
upon contact, scattering the liquid fire upon everything in the
immediate vicinity. I might add that I do not make this assertion except
after the fullest investigation and confirmation. I have not only talked
with officers and men who were in the trenches into which these vitriol
bombs were thrown, but American ambulance drivers both in the Vosges and
the Argonne told me that they had carried to the hospitals French
soldiers whose faces had been burned almost beyond recognition.
“But we captured one of the vitriol-throwers,” said an officer who was
telling me about the hellish business. “He was pretty badly burned
himself.”
“I suppose you shot him then and there,” said I.
“Oh, no,” was the answer, “we sent him along with the other prisoners.”
“You don’t mean to say,” I exclaimed, indignation in my voice, “that you
captured a man who had been throwing vitriol at your soldiers and let
him live?”
“Naturally,” said the officer quietly. “There was nothing else to do.
You see, monsieur, we French are civilized.”
V
THE FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE
When the history of this war comes to be written, the great French
offensive which began on the 25th of September, 1915, midway between
Rheims and Verdun, will doubtless be known as the Battle of Champagne.
Hell holds no horrors for one who has seen that battle-field. Could
Dante have walked beside me across that dreadful place, which had been
transformed by human agency from a peaceful countryside to a garbage
heap, a cesspool, and a charnel-house combined, he would never have
written his “Inferno,” because the hell of his imagination would have
seemed colorless and tame. The difficulty in writing about it is that
people will not believe me. I shall be accused of imagination and
exaggeration, whereas the truth is that no one could imagine, much less
exaggerate, the horrors that I saw upon those rolling, chalky plains.
[Illustration:
The battle-field of Champagne.
“A peaceful countryside transformed by human agency to a garbage heap,
a cesspool, and a charnel-house combined.”
]
[Illustration:
Bringing in the wounded during the battle of Champagne.
This battle cost Europe more men in killed and wounded than fought at
Gettysburg.
]
In order that you may get clearly in your mind the setting of this
titanic conflict, in which nearly a million and a half Frenchmen and
Germans were engaged and in which Europe lost more men in killed and
wounded than fought at Gettysburg, get out your atlas, and on the map of
eastern France draw a more or less irregular line from Rheims to Verdun.
This line roughly corresponds to the battle-front in Champagne. On the
south side of it were the French, on the north the Germans. About midway
between Rheims and Verdun mark off on that line a sector of some fifteen
miles. If you have a sufficiently large scale map, the hamlet of
Auberive may be taken as one end of the sector and Massiges as the
other. This, then, was the spot chosen by the French for their
sledge-hammer blow against the German wall of steel.
There is scarcely a region in all France where a battle could have been
fought with less injury to property. Imagine, if you please, an immense
undulating plain, its surface broken by occasional low hills and ridges,
none of them much over six hundred feet in height, and wandering in and
out between those ridges the narrow stream which is the Marne. The
country hereabouts is very sparsely settled; the few villages that dot
the plain are wretchedly poor; the trees on the slopes of the ridges are
stunted and scraggly; the soil is of chalky marl, which you have only to
scratch to leave a staring scar, and the grass which tries to grow upon
it seems to wither and die of a broken heart. This was the great
manœuvre ground of Chalons, and it was good for little else, yet only a
few miles to the westward begin the vineyards which are France’s chief
source of wealth, and an hour’s journey to the eastward is the beautiful
forest of the Argonne.
Virtually, the entire summer of 1915 was spent by the French in making
their preparations for the great offensive. These preparations were
assisted by the extension of the British front as far as the Somme, thus
releasing a large number of French troops for the operations in
Champagne; by the formation of new French units; and by the
extraordinary quantity of ammunition made available by hard and
continuous work in the factories. The volume of preparatory work was
stupendous. Artillery of every pattern and caliber, from the light
mountain guns to the monster weapons which the workers of Le Creusot and
Bourges had prophetically christened “_Les Vainqueurs_,” was gradually
assembled until nearly three thousand guns had been concentrated on a
front of only fifteen miles. Had the guns been placed side by side they
would have extended far beyond the fifteen-mile battle-front. There were
cannon everywhere. Each battery had a designated spot to fire at and a
score of captive balloons with telephonic connections directed the fire.
One battery was placed just opposite a German redoubt which, the Germans
boasted, could be held against the whole French army by two washerwomen
with machine-guns. Behind each of the French guns were stacked two
thousand shells. A network of light railways was built in order to get
this enormous supply of ammunition up to the guns. From the end of the
railway they built a macadamized highway, forty feet wide and nine miles
long, straight as a ruler across the rolling plain. Underground shelters
for the men were dug and underground stores for the arms and ammunition.
The field was dotted with subterranean first-aid stations, their
locations indicated by sign-boards with scarlet arrows and by the Red
Cross flags flying over them. That the huge masses of infantry to be
used in the attack might reach their stations without being annihilated
by German shell-fire, the French dug forty miles of reserve and
communication trenches, ten miles of which were wide enough for four men
to walk abreast. Hospitals all over France were emptied and put in
readiness for the river of wounded which would soon come flowing in. In
addition to all this, moral preparation was also necessary, for it was a
question whether the preceding months of trench warfare and the
individual character it gives to actions had not affected the control of
the officers over their men. Everything was foreseen and provided for;
nothing was left to chance. The French had undertaken the biggest job in
the world, and they set about accomplishing it as systematically, as
methodically as though they had taken a contract to build a Simplon
Tunnel or to dig a Panama Canal.
The Germans had held the line from Auberive to the Forest of the Argonne
since the battle of the Marne. For more than a year they had been
constructing fortifications and defenses of so formidable a nature that
it is scarcely to be wondered at that they considered their position as
being virtually impregnable. Their trenches, which were topped with
sand-bags and in many cases had walls of concrete, were protected by
wire entanglements, some of which were as much as sixty yards deep. The
ground in front of the entanglements was strewn with sharpened stakes
and _chevaux-de-frise_ and land mines and bombs which exploded upon
contact. The men manning the trenches fought from behind shields of
armor-plate and every fifteen yards was a machine-gun. Mounted on the
trench walls were revolving steel turrets, miniature editions of those
on battleships, all save the top of the turret and the muzzle of the
quick-firing gun within it being embedded in the ground. The trenches
formed a veritable maze, with traps and blind passageways and
cul-de-sacs down which attackers would swarm only to be wiped out by
skilfully concealed machine-guns. At some points there were five lines
of trenches, one behind the other, the ground behind them being divided
into sections and supplied with an extraordinary number of communication
trenches, protected by wire entanglements on both sides, so that, in
case the first line was compelled to give way, the assailants would find
themselves confronted by what were to all intents a series of small
forts, heavily armed and communicating one with the other, thus enabling
the defenders to rally and organize flank attacks without the slightest
delay. This elaborate system of trenches formed only the first German
line of defense, remember; behind it there was a second line, the
artillery being stationed between the two. There was, moreover, an
elaborate system of light railways, some of which came right up to the
front line, connecting with the line from Challerange to Bazancourt,
that there might be no delay in getting up ammunition and fresh troops
from the bases in the rear. No wonder that the Germans regarded their
position as an inland Gibraltar and listened with amused complacence to
the reports brought in by their aviators of the great preparations being
made behind the French lines. Not yet had they heard the roar of
France’s massed artillery or seen the heavens open and rain down death.