hand-grenades, bombs, and aerial torpedoes as the ground under a
pine-tree is with cones. One was, in fact, compelled to walk with the
utmost care in order to avoid stepping upon these tubes filled with
sudden death and being blown to kingdom come. I had picked up and was
casually examining what looked like a piece of broom-handle with a tin
tomato-can on the end, when the intelligence officer who was
accompanying me noticed what I was doing. “Don’t drop that!” he
exclaimed, “put it down gently. It’s a German hand-grenade that has
failed to explode and the least jar may set it off. They’re as dangerous
to tamper with as nitroglycerine.” I put it down as carefully as though
it were a sleeping baby that I did not wish to waken. As the French
Government has no desire to lose any of its soldiers unnecessarily, men
had been set to work building around the unexploded shells and torpedoes
little fences of barbed wire, just as a gardener fences in a
particularly rare shrub or tree. Other men were at work carefully
rolling up the barbed wire in the captured German entanglements, in
collecting and sorting out the arms and equipment with which the field
was strewn, in stacking up the thousands upon thousands of empty brass
shell-cases to be shipped back to the factories for reloading, and even
in emptying the bags filled with sand which had lined the German
parapets and tying them in bundles ready to be used over again. They are
a thrifty people, are the French. There was enough junk of one sort and
another scattered over the battle-field to have stocked all the
curio-shops in Europe and America for years to come, but as everything
on a field of battle is claimed by the government nothing can be carried
away. This explains why the brass shells that are smuggled back to Paris
readily sell for ten dollars apiece, while for German helmets the curio
dealers can get almost any price that they care to ask. As a matter of
fact, it is against the law to offer any war trophies for sale or,
indeed, to have any in one’s possession. What the French intend to do
with the vast quantity of junk which they have taken from the
battle-fields, heaven only knows. It is said that they have great
storehouses filled with German helmets and similar trophies which they
are going to sell after the war to souvenir collectors, thus adding to
the national revenues. If this is so there will certainly be a glut in
the curio market and it will be a poor household indeed that will not
have on the sitting-room mantel a German _pickelhaube_. After the war is
over hordes of tourists will no doubt make excursions to these
battle-fields, just as they used to make excursions to Waterloo and
Gettysburg, and the farmers who own the fields will make their fortunes
showing the visitors through the trenches and dug-outs at five francs a
head.
[Illustration:
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.
]
[Illustration:
Mounted on the German trench walls were revolving steel turrets
containing quick-firing guns.
When the French captured the turret shown above they found inside it
three dead Germans, who, they assert, had been locked in by their
officers and left to die.
]
The French officers who accompanied me over the battle-field
particularly called my attention to a steel turret, some six feet high
and eight or nine feet in diameter, which had been mounted on one of the
German trench walls. The turret, which had a revolving top, contained a
50-millimetre gun served by three men. The French troops who stormed the
German position found that the small steel door giving access to the
interior of the turret was fastened on the outside by a chain and
padlock. When they broke it open they found, so they told me, the bodies
of three Germans who had apparently been locked in by their officers,
and left there to fight and die with no chance of escape. I have no
reason in the world to doubt the good faith of the officers who showed
me the turret and told me the story, and yet—well, it is one of those
things which seems too improbable to be true. When I was in Alsace the
French officers told me of having found in certain of the captured
positions German soldiers chained to their machine-guns. There again the
inherent improbability of the incident leads one to question its truth.
From what I have seen of the German soldier, I should say that he was
the last man in the world who had to be chained to his gun in order to
make him fight. Yet in this war so many wildly improbable, wholly
incredible things have actually occurred that one is not justified in
denying the truth of an assertion merely because it sounds unlikely.
[Illustration:
“Brown-skinned men from North Africa in turbans and burnooses.”
]
[Illustration:
Motor-buses with wire-netting tops filled with carrier pigeons.
]
One of the things that particularly impressed me during my visit to
Champagne was the feverish activity that prevailed behind the
firing-line. It was the busiest place that I have ever seen; busier than
Wall Street at the noon-hour; busier than the Canal Zone at the rush
period of the Canal’s construction. The roads behind the front for
twenty miles were filled with moving troops and transport-trains; long
columns of sturdy infantrymen in mud-stained coats of faded blue and
wearing steel casques which gave them a startling resemblance to their
ancestors, the men-at-arms of the Middle Ages; brown-skinned men from
North Africa in snowy turbans and voluminous burnooses, and
black-skinned men from West Africa, whose khaki uniforms were brightened
by broad red sashes and rakish red tarbooshes; sun-tanned Colonial
soldiery from Annam and Tonquin, from Somaliland and Madagascar, wearing
on their tunics the ribbons of wars fought in lands of which most people
have never so much as heard; Spahis from Morocco and the Sahara, mounted
on horses as wiry and hardy as themselves; Zouaves in jaunty fezzes and
braided jackets and enormous trousers; sailors from the fleet, brought
to handle the big naval guns, swaggering along with the roll of the sea
in their gait; cuirassiers, their steel breastplates and horse-tailed
helmets making them look astonishingly like Roman horsemen; dragoons so
picturesque that they seemed to be posing for a Detaille or a
Meissonier; field-batteries, pale blue like everything else in the
French army, rocking and swaying over the stones; cyclists with their
rifles slung across their backs hunter-fashion; leather-jacketed
despatch riders on panting motor-cycles; post-offices on wheels;
telegraph offices on wheels; butcher-shops on wheels; bake-shops on
wheels; garages on wheels; motor-busses, their tops covered with
wire-netting and filled with carrier pigeons; giant search-lights;
water-carts drawn by patient Moorish donkeys whose turbaned drivers
cursed them in shrill, harsh Arabic; troop transport cars like miniature
railway-coaches, each carrying fifty men; field-kitchens with the smoke
pouring from their stovepipes and steam rising from the soup caldrons;
long lines of drinking-water wagons, the gift of the Touring Club de
France; great herds of cattle and woolly waves of sheep, soon to be
converted into beef and mutton, for the fighting man needs meat, and
plenty of it; pontoon trains; balloon outfits; machine-guns;
pack-trains; mountain batteries; ambulances; world without end, amen.
Though the roads were jammed from ditch to ditch, there was no
confusion, no congestion. Everything was as well regulated as the
traffic on Fifth Avenue or the Strand. If the roads were crowded, so
were the fields. Here a battalion of Zouaves at bayonet practise was
being instructed in the “haymaker’s lift,” that terrible upward thrust
in which a soldier trained in the use of the bayonet can, in a single
stroke, rip his adversary open from waist to neck, and toss him over his
shoulder as he would a forkful of hay. Over there a brigade of
_chasseurs d’Afrique_ was encamped, the long lines of horses, the hooded
wagons, and the fires with the cooking-pots steaming over them,
suggesting a mammoth encampment of gypsies. In the next field a regiment
of Moroccan tirailleurs had halted for the night, and the men, kneeling
on their blankets, were praying with their faces turned toward Mecca.
Down by the horse-lines a Moorish barber was at work shaving the heads
of the soldiers, but taking care always to leave the little top-knot by
means of which the faithful, when they die, may be jerked to Paradise. A
little farther on the huge yellow bulk of an observation balloon—“_les
saucisses_,” the French call them—was slowly filling preparatory to
taking its place aloft with its fellows, which, at intervals of half a
mile, hung above the French lines, straining at their tethers like
horses that were frightened and wished to break away. In whichever
direction I looked, men were drilling or marching. Where all these
hordes of men had come from, where they were bound for, what they were
going to do, no one seemed to know or, indeed, to particularly care.
They were merely pawns which were being moved here and there upon a
mighty chess-board by a stout old man in a general’s uniform, sitting at
a map-covered table in a farmhouse many miles away.
[Illustration:
German prisoners came by, carrying on their shoulders stretchers on
which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men.
]
As we made our way slowly and laboriously toward the front across a
region so littered with scraps of metal and broken iron and twisted wire
that it looked like the ruins of a burned hardware store, we began to
meet the caravans of wounded. Lying with white, drawn faces on the
dripping stretchers were men whose bodies had been ripped open like the
carcasses that hang in front of butcher-shops; men who had been blinded
and will spend the rest of their days groping in darkness; men smashed
out of all resemblance to anything human, yet still alive; and other men
who, with no wound upon them, raved and laughed and cackled in insane
mirth at the frightful humor of the things that they had seen. Every
house and farmyard for miles around was filled with wounded, and still
they came streaming in, some hobbling, some on stretchers, some assisted
by comrades, some bareheaded, with the dried blood clotted on their
heads and faces, others with their gasmasks and their mud-plastered
helmets still on. Two soldiers came by pushing wheeled stretchers, on
which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men. The soldiers were
whistling and singing, like men returning from a day’s work well done,
and occasionally one of them in sheer exuberance of spirits would send
his helmet spinning into the air. Coming to a little declivity, they
raced down it with their grisly burdens, like delivery boys racing with
their carts. The light vehicles bumped and jounced over the uneven
ground until one of the corpses threatened to fall off, whereupon the
soldiers stopped and, still laughing, tied the dead thing on again. Such
is the callousness begotten by war.
Their offensive in Champagne cost the French, I have every reason to
believe, very close to 110,000 men. The German casualties, so the French
General Staff asserts, were about 140,000, of whom 21,000 were
prisoners. In addition the Germans lost 121 guns. Despite this appalling
cost in human lives, the distance gained by the French was so small that
it cannot be seen on the ordinary map. Yet to measure the effect of the
French effort by the ground gained would be a serious mistake. Just as
by the Marne victory the French stopped the invasion and ruined the
original German plan, which was first to shatter France and then turn
against Russia; and just as by the victory of the Yser they effectively
prevented the enemy from reaching the Channel ports or getting a
foothold in the Pas-de-Calais, so the offensive in Champagne, costly as
it was in human lives, fulfilled its double mission of holding large
German forces on the western front and of demoralizing and wearing down
the German army. It proved, moreover, that the Allies _can_ pierce the
Germans provided they are willing to pay the cost.
Darkness was falling rapidly when I turned my back on the great
battle-field, and the guns were roaring with redoubled fury in what is
known on the British front as “the Evening Hate” and on the French lines
as “the Evening Prayer.” As I emerged from the communication trench into
the highroad where my car was waiting I met a long column of infantry,
ghostly figures in the twilight, with huge packs on their backs and
rifles slanting on their shoulders, marching briskly in the direction of
the thundering guns. It was the night-shift going on duty at the
mills—the mills where they turn human beings into carrion.
VI
THE CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS
Dawn was breaking over the Lorraine hills when the French aircraft were
wheeled from their canvas hangars and ranged in squadrilla formation
upon the level surface of the plain. In the dim light of early morning
the machines, with their silver bodies and snowy wings, bore an amazing
resemblance to a flock of great white birds which, having settled for
the night, were about to resume their flight. All through the night the
mechanicians had been busy about them, testing the motors, tightening
the guy-wires, and adjusting the planes, while the pilots had directed
the loading of the explosives, for a whisper had passed along the line
of sheds that a gigantic air-raid, on a scale not yet attempted, was to
be made on some German town. At a signal from the officer in command of
the aviation field the pilots and observers, unrecognizable in their
goggles and leather helmets and muffled to the ears in leather and fur,
climbed into their seats. In the clips beneath each aeroplane reposed
three long, lean messengers of death, the torpedoes of the sky, ready to
be sent hurtling downward by the pulling of a lever, while smaller
projectiles, to be dropped by hand, filled every square inch in the
bodies of the aeroplanes. From somewhere out on the aviation field a
smoke rocket shot suddenly into the air. It was the signal for
departure. With a deafening roar from their propellers the great
biplanes, in rapid succession, left the ground and, like a flock of wild
fowl, winged their way straight into the rising sun. As they crossed the
German lines at a height of twelve thousand feet the French observers
could see, far below, the decoy aeroplanes which had preceded them
rocking slowly from side to side above the German antiaircraft guns in
such a manner as to divert their attention from the raiders.
On an occasion like this each man is permitted the widest latitude of
action. He is given an itinerary which he is expected to adhere to as
closely as circumstances will permit, and he is given a set point at
which to aim his bombs, but in all other respects he may use his own
discretion. The raiders flew at first almost straight toward the rising
sun, and it was not until they were well within the enemy’s lines that
they altered their course, turning southward only when they were
opposite the town which was their objective. So rapid was the pace at
which they were travelling that it was not yet six o’clock when the
commander of the squadron, peering through his glasses, saw, far below
him, the yellow gridiron which he knew to be the streets, the splotches
of green which he knew to be the parks, and the squares of red and gray
which he knew to be the buildings of Karlsruhe. The first warning that
the townspeople had was when a dynamite shell came plunging out of
nowhere and exploded with a crash that rocked the city to its
foundations. The people of Karlsruhe were being given a dose of the same
medicine which the Zeppelins had given to Antwerp, to Paris, and to
London. As the French airmen reached the town they swooped down in swift
succession out of the gray morning sky until they were close enough to
the ground to clearly distinguish through the fleecy mist the various
objectives which had been given them. For weeks they had studied maps
and bird’s-eye photographs of Karlsruhe until they knew the place as
well as though they had lived in it all their lives. One took the old
gray castle on the hill, another took the Margrave’s palace in the
valley, others headed for the railway-station, the arms factory, and the
barracks. Then hell broke loose in Karlsruhe. For nearly an hour it
rained bombs. Not incendiary bombs or shrapnel, but huge 4-inch and
6-inch shells filled with high explosive which annihilated everything
they hit. Holes as large as cellars suddenly appeared in the stone-paved
streets and squares; buildings of brick and stone and concrete crashed
to the ground as though flattened by the hand of God; fires broke out in
various quarters of the city and raged unchecked; the terrified
inhabitants cowered in their cellars or ran in blind panic for the open
country; the noise was terrific, for bombs were falling at the rate of a
dozen to the minute; beneath that rain of death Karlsruhe rocked and
reeled. The artillery was called out but it was useless; no guns could
hit the great white birds which twisted and turned and swooped and
climbed a mile or more overhead. Each aeroplane, as soon as it had
exhausted its cargo of explosives, turned its nose toward the French
lines and went skimming homeward as fast as its propellers could take it
there, but to the inhabitants of the quivering, shell-torn town it must
have seemed as though the procession of aircraft would never cease. The
return to the French lines was not as free from danger as the outward
trip had been, for the news of the raid had been flashed over the
country by wire and wireless and antiaircraft guns were on the lookout
for the raiders everywhere. The guarding aeroplanes were on the alert,
however, and themselves attracted the fire of the German batteries or
engaged the German _Taubes_ while the returning raiders sped by high
overhead. Of the four squadrillas of aeroplanes which set out for
Karlsruhe only two machines failed to return. These lost their bearings
and were surprised by the sudden rising of hawk-like _Aviatiks_ which
cut them off from home and, after fierce struggles in the air, forced
them to descend into the German lines. But it was not a heavy price to
pay for the destruction that had been wrought and the moral effect that
had been produced, for all that day the roads leading out of Karlsruhe
were choked with frantic fugitives and the stories which they told
spread over all southern Germany a cloud of despondency and gloom. Since
then the news of the Zeppelin raids on London has brought a thrill of
fear to the people of Karlsruhe. They have learned what it means to have
death drop out of the sky.
More progress has been made in the French air service, which has been
placed under the direction of the recently created Subministry of
Aviation, than in any other branch of the Republic’s fighting machine.
Though definite information regarding the French air service is
extremely difficult to obtain, there is no doubt that on December 1,
1915, France had more than three thousand aeroplanes in commission, and
this number is being steadily increased. The French machines, though of
many makes and types, are divided into three classes, according to
whether they are to be used for reconnoissance, for fire control, or for
bombardment. The machines generally used for reconnoissance work are the
Moranes, the Maurice Farmans, and a new type of small machine known as
the “Baby” Nieuport. The last-named, which are but twenty-five feet wide
and can be built in eight days at a cost of only six thousand francs,
might well be termed the Fords of the air. They have an
eighty-horsepower motor, carry only the pilot, who operates the
machine-gun mounted over his head, and can attain the amazing speed of
one hundred and twenty miles an hour. These tiny machines can ascend at
a sharper angle than any other aeroplane made, it being claimed for
them, and with truth, that they can do things which a large bird, such
as an eagle or a hawk, could not do. The machines generally used for
directing artillery fire are either Voisins or Caudron biplanes. The
Voisin, which carries an observer as well as a pilot, is armed with a
Hotchkiss quick-firer throwing three-pound shells, being the only
machine of its size having sufficient stability to stand the recoil from
so heavy a gun. The Caudron, which likewise has a crew of two men, has
two motors, each acting independently of the other. I was shown one of
these machines which, during an observation flight over the German
lines, was struck by a shell which killed the observer and demolished
one of the motors; the other motor was not damaged, however, and with it
the pilot was able to bring the machine and his dead companion back to
the French lines. For making raids and bombardments the Voisin and
Breguet machines have generally been used, but they are now being
replaced by the giant triplane which has fittingly been called “the
Dreadnaught of the skies.” This aerial monster, the last word in
aircraft construction, has a sixty-three-foot spread of wing; its four
motors generate eight hundred horse-power; its armament consists of two
Hotchkiss quick-firing cannon and four machine-guns; it can carry twelve
men—though on a raid the crew consists of four—and twelve hundred pounds
of explosive; its cost is six hundred thousand francs.
As a result of this extraordinary advance in aviation, France has to-day
a veritable aerial navy, formed in squadrons and divisions, with
battle-planes, cruisers, scouts, and destroyers, all heavily armored and
carrying both machine-guns and cannon firing 3-inch shells. Each
squadron, as at present formed, consists of one battle-plane, two
battle-cruisers, and six scout-planes, with a complement of upward of
fifty officers and men, which includes not only the pilots and observers
but the mechanics and the drivers of the lorries and trailers which form
part of each outfit. These raiding squadrons are constantly operating
over the enemy’s lines, bombarding his bases, railway lines, and
cantonments, hindering the transportation of troops and ammunition, and
creating general demoralization behind the firing-line. On such forays
it is the mission of the smaller and swifter machines, such as the
Nieuports, to convoy and protect the larger and slower craft exactly as
destroyers convoy and protect a battleship.
Two types of projectiles are carried on raiding aeroplanes: aerial
torpedoes, two, three, or four in number, fitted with fins, like the
feathers on an arrow, in order to guide their course, which are held by
clips under the body of the machine and can be released when over the
point to be bombarded by merely pulling a lever; and large quantities of
smaller bombs, filled with high explosive and fitted with percussion
fuses, which are dropped by hand. It is extremely difficult to attain
any degree of accuracy in dropping bombs from moving aircraft, for it
must be borne in mind that the projectiles, on being released, do not at
once fall in a perfectly straight line to the earth, like a brick
dropped from the top of a skyscraper. When an aeroplane is travelling
forward at a speed of, let us say, sixty miles an hour, the bombs
carried on the machine are also moving through space at the same rate.
Owing to this forward movement combining with the downward gravitational
drop, the path of the bomb is really a curve, and for this curve the
aviator must learn to make allowance. Should the aircraft hover over one
spot, however, the downward flight of the bomb is, of course,
comparatively vertical.
[Illustration:
Lunéville from an aeroplane.
Through a study of maps and photographs the aviators come to know the
towns they are to bombard as well as the people who live in them.
This photo was taken by an American in the French air service.
]
The most exciting, as well as the most dangerous, work allotted to the
aviators is that of flying over the enemy’s lines and, by means of huge
cameras fitted with telephoto lens and fastened beneath the bodies of
the machines, taking photographs of the German positions. As soon as the
required exposures have been made, the machine speeds back to the French
lines, usually amid a storm of bursting shrapnel, and the plates are
quickly developed in the dark room, which is a part of every aerodrome.
From the picture thus obtained an enlargement is made, and within two or
three hours at the most the staff knows every detail of the German
position, even to the depth of the wire entanglements and the number and
location of the machine-guns. Should weather conditions or the activity
of the enemy’s antiaircraft batteries make it inadvisable to send a
machine on one of these photographic excursions, the camera is attached
to a _cerf-volant_, or war-kite. The entire equipment is carried on
three motor-cars built for the purpose, one carrying the dismounted
kite, the second the cameras and crew, while the third car is a dark
room on wheels. I can recall few more interesting sights along the
battle-front than that of one of these war-kites in operation. Taking
shelter behind a farmhouse or haystack, the staff, in scarcely more time
than it takes to tell about it, have jointed together the bamboo rods
which form the framework of the kite, the linen which forms the planes
is stretched into place, a camera with its shutter controlled by an
electric wire is slung underneath, and the great kite is sent into the
air. When it is over that section of the enemy’s trenches of which a
photograph is wanted, the officer at the end of the wire presses a
button, the shutter of the camera swinging a thousand feet above flashes
open and shut, the kite is immediately hauled down, a photographer takes
the holder containing the exposed plate and disappears with it into the
wheeled dark room to appear, five minutes later, with a picture of the
German trenches.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
French antiaircraft gun in action against a German aeroplane.
]