illustrated by the fact that in the Russo-Japanese war the Japanese
fought for weeks and sacrificed thousands of men in order to capture
203-Metre Hill, not, mind you, because of its strategic importance, but
in order that they might effectively control the fire of their siege
mortars, which were endeavoring to reach the battleships in the harbor
of Port Arthur. To-day that information would be furnished in an hour by
aeroplanes. From dawn to dark aircraft hang over the enemy’s positions,
spotting his batteries, mapping his trenches, noting the movements of
troops and trains, yet with a storm of shrapnel bursting about them
constantly. I remember seeing, in Champagne, a French aeroplane rocking
lazily over the German lines, and counting sixty shrapnel clouds
floating about it at one time. So thick were the patches of fleecy white
that they looked like the white tufts on a sky-blue coverlet. The
shooting of the German verticals (antiaircraft guns) has steadily
improved as a result of the constant practise they have had, so that
half the time there are ragged rents in the French planes caused by
fragments of exploding shells. So deafening is the racket of the motor
and propeller, however, that it is impossible to hear a shell unless it
bursts at very close range, so that the aviators, intent on their work,
are often utterly unconscious of how near they are to death. It is very
curious how close shells can explode to a machine and yet not cripple it
enough to bring it down. A pilot flying over the German lines in
Flanders had his leg smashed by a bursting shell, which, strangely
enough, did no damage to the planes or motor. The wounded man fainted
from the pain and shock and his machine, left uncontrolled, began to
plunge earthward. Recovering consciousness, the aviator, despite the
excruciating pain which he was suffering, retained sufficient strength
and presence of mind to get his machine under control and head it back
for the French lines, though shrapnel was bursting all about him. He
came quietly and gracefully to ground at his home aviation field and
then fell over his steering lever unconscious.
No nervous man is wanted in the air service, and the moment that a flier
shows signs that his nerves are becoming affected he is given a furlough
and ordered to take a rest. So great is the mental strain, the exposure,
and the noise, however, that probably twenty-five per cent of the
aviators lose their nerve completely and have to leave the service
altogether. The great French aviation school at Buc, near Paris, turns
out pilots at the rate of one hundred and sixty a month. The first
lessons are given on a machine with clipped wings, known as “the
penguin,” which cannot rise from the ground, and from this the men are
gradually advanced, stage by stage, from machines as safe and steady and
well-mannered as riding-school horses, until they at last become
qualified pilots, capable of handling the quick-turning,
uncertain-tempered broncos of the air. Provided he has sound nerves, a
strong constitution, and average intelligence, a man who has never been
in a machine before can become a qualified pilot in thirty days. Since
the war began the French air service has attracted the reckless, the
daring, and the adventurous from the four corners of the earth as iron
filings are attracted by a magnet. Wearing on the collars of their
silver-blue uniforms the gold wings of the flying corps are
cow-punchers, polo-players, prize-fighters, professional bicycle riders,
big-game hunters, soldiers of fortune, young men who bear famous names
and other young men whose names are notorious rather than famous. In one
squadrilla on the Champagne front I found a Texan cowboy and adventurer
named Hall; Elliott Cowdin, the Long Island polo-player; and
Charpentier, the heavyweight champion of France. For youngsters who are
seeking excitement and adventure, no sport in the world can offer the
thrills of the _chasse au Taube_. To drive with one hand a machine that
travels through space at a speed double that of the fastest
express-train and with the other hand to operate a mitrailleuse that
spits death at the rate of a thousand shots a minute; to twist and turn
and loop and circle two miles above the earth in an endeavor to overcome
an adversary as quick-witted and quick-acting as yourself, knowing that
if you are victorious the victory is due to your skill and courage
alone—there you have a game which makes all other sports appear ladylike
and tame.
When an aeroplane armed with a mitrailleuse attacks an enemy machine the
pilot immediately manœuvres so as to permit the gunner observer to bring
his gun into action. In order to make the bullets “spread” and insure
that at least some of the many shots get home, the gunner swings his
weapon up and down, with a kind of chopping motion, so that, viewed from
the front of the machine, the stream of bullets, were they visible,
would be shaped like a fan. At the same time the gunner swings his
weapon gently round, covering with a stream of lead the space through
which his enemy will have to pass. Should the enemy machine be below the
other, then to get clear he would possibly dive under his opponent in a
sweeping turn. By this manœuvre the gunner is placed in a position where
he cannot bring his weapon to bear and he will have to turn in pursuit
before his gun can be brought into action again. From this it will be
seen that an aeroplane gunner does not take deliberate aim, as would a
man armed with a rifle, but instead fills the air in the path of his
opponent with showers of bullets in the hope that some of them will find
the mark. Should both machines be armed with machine-guns, as is now
nearly always the case, victory is often a question of quick manœuvring
combined with a considerable element of luck. To win out in this aerial
warfare, a man has to combine the quickness of a fencer with the
coolness of a big-game shot.
[Illustration:
When the chickens come home to roost.
It is always a hazardous performance for an aeroplane to make a
landing after nightfall, even when the ground is illumined by a
search-light.
]
One of the greatest dangers the military aviator has to face is landing
after night has fallen. Though every machine has a small motor, worked
by the wind, which generates enough power for a small search-light, the
light is not sufficiently powerful to be of much assistance in gauging
the distance from the ground. Sunset is, therefore, always an anxious
time on the aviation fields, nor is the anxiety at an end until all the
fliers are accounted for. As the sun begins to sink into the west the
returning aviators one by one appear, black dots against the crimson
sky. One by one they come swooping down from the heavens and come to
rest upon the ground. Twilight merges into dusk and dusk turns into
darkness, but one of the flying men has not yet come. The four corners
of the aviation field are marked with great flares of kerosene, that the
late comer may be guided home, and down the middle of the field lanterns
are laid out in the form of a huge arrow with the head pointing into the
wind, while search-lights, mounted on motor-cars, alternately sweep
field and sky with their white beams. Anxiety is written plainly on the
face of every one. Have the Boches brought him down? Has he lost his
way? Or has he been forced to descend elsewhere from engine trouble or
lack of petrol? “Hark!” exclaims some one suddenly. “He’s coming!” and
in the sudden hush that ensues you hear, from somewhere in the upper
darkness, a motor’s deep, low throb. The vertical beams of the
search-lights fall and flood the level plain with yellow radiance. The
hum of the motor rises into a roar and then, when just overhead,
abruptly stops, and down through the darkness slides a great bird which
is darker than the darkness and settles silently upon the plain. The
last of the chickens has come home to roost.
[Illustration:
Antiaircraft guns, posted outside the towns, are ready to give a warm
reception to an aerial intruder.
]
In addition to the aeroplanes kept upon the front for purposes of
bombardment, photography, artillery control, and scouting, several
squadrillas are kept constantly on duty in the vicinity of Paris and
certain other French cities for the purpose of driving off marauding
_Taubes_ or Zeppelins. Just as the streets of Paris are patrolled by
gendarmes, so the air-lanes above the city are patrolled, both night and
day, by guarding aeroplanes. To me there was something wonderfully
inspiring in the thought that all through the hours of darkness these
aerial watchers were sweeping in great circles above the sleeping city,
guarding it from the death that comes in the night. The people of the
United States do not fully understand the Zeppelin raid problem with
which those intrusted with the defense of Paris and of London are
confronted. The Zeppelins, it must be remembered, never come out unless
it is a very dark night, and then they pass over the lines at a height
of two miles or more, descending only when they are above the city which
they intend to attack. They slowly, silently settle down until their
officers can get a view of their target and then the bombs begin to
drop. This is usually the first warning that the townspeople have that
Zeppelins are abroad, though it occasionally happens that they have been
seen or heard crossing the lines, in which case the city is warned by
telephone, the antiaircraft guns prepare for action, and the lights in
the streets and houses are put out. Should the Zeppelins succeed in
getting above the city, the guarding aeroplanes go up after them and as
soon as the search-lights spot them the guns open fire with shrapnel.
The raiders are rarely fired on by the antiaircraft guns while they are
hovering over the city, however, as experience has shown that more
people are killed by falling shell splinters than by the enemy’s bombs.
Nor do the French aeroplanes dare to make serious attacks until the
Zeppelin is clear of the city, for it is not difficult to imagine the
destruction that would result were one of these monsters, five hundred
feet long and weighing thirty-six thousand pounds, to be destroyed and
its flaming débris to fall upon the city. The problem that faces the
French authorities, therefore, is stopping the Zeppelins before they
reach Paris, and it speaks volumes for the efficiency of the French air
service that there has been no Zeppelin raid on the French capital for
nearly a year.
In order to detect the approach of Zeppelins the French military
authorities have recently adopted the novel expedient of establishing
microphone stations at several points in and about Paris, these
delicately attuned instruments recording with unfailing accuracy the
throb of a Zeppelin’s or an aeroplane’s propellers long before it can be
heard by the human ear.
For the protection of London the British Government has built an aerial
navy consisting of two types of aircraft—scouts and battle-planes.
Practically the only requirement for the scouting planes is that they
must have a speed of not less than one hundred miles an hour and a fuel
capacity for at least a six-hour flight, thus giving them a cruising
radius of three hundred miles. That is, they will be able to raid many
German ports and cities and return with ease to their base in England.
Their small size—they are only thirty feet across the wings—and great
speed will make them almost impossible to hit and it is expected that
antiaircraft guns will be practically useless against them. They will
constantly circle in the higher levels, as near the Zeppelin bases as
they can get, and the minute they see the giants emerging from their
hangars they will be off to England to give the alarm. Their speed being
double that of a Zeppelin, they will have reached England long before
the raider arrives. Then the new “Canada” type, each carrying a ton of
bombs, will go out to meet the Germans. These giant biplanes, one
hundred and two feet across the wings, with two motors developing three
hundred and twenty horse-power, have a speed of more than ninety miles
an hour and can overtake a Zeppelin as a motor-cycle policeman can
overhaul a limousine. They are fitted with the new device for insuring
accuracy in bomb-dropping and, with their superior speed, will hang
above the monster dirigibles, as a hawk hangs above a hen-roost,
plumping shell after shell into the great silk sausage quivering below
them.
Both the French and British Governments now have a considerable number
of hydroaeroplanes in commission. These amphibious craft, which are
driven by two motors of one hundred and sixty horse-power each and have
a speed of about seventy-five miles an hour, are designed primarily for
the hunting of submarines. Though a submarine cannot be seen from the
deck of a vessel, an aviator can see it, even though it is submerged
twenty feet, and a bomb dropped near it will cave its sides in by the
mere force of the explosion, particularly if that bomb is loaded with
two hundred pounds of melinite, as are the ones carried by the French
hydroaeroplanes.
But the most novel of all the uses to which the aircraft have been put
in this war is that of dropping spies in the enemy’s territory. On
numerous occasions French and British aviators have flown across the
German lines, carrying with them an intelligence officer disguised as a
peasant or a farm-hand, and have landed him at some remote spot where
the descent of an aeroplane is scarcely likely to attract the attention
of the military authorities. As soon as the aviator has landed his
passenger he ascends again, with the understanding, however, that he
will return to the same spot a day, or two days, or a week later, to
pick up the spy and carry him back to the French lines. The exploits of
some of these secret agents thus dropped from the sky upon enemy soil
would make the wildest fiction seem probable and tame. One French
officer, thus landed behind the German front in Flanders, succeeded in
slowly working his way right across Belgium, gathering information as he
went as to the resources of the Germans and the disposition of their
troops, only to be caught just as he was crossing the frontier into
Holland. Though the Germans expressed unbounded admiration for his
coolness, courage, and daring, he was none the less a spy. He died
before the rifles of a firing-party.
It has repeatedly been said that in this war the spirit of chivalry does
not exist, and, so far as the land forces are concerned, this is largely
true. But chivalry still exists among the fighters of the air. If, for
example, a French aviator is forced to descend in the German lines,
either because his machine has been damaged by gun fire or from engine
trouble, a German aviator will fly over the French lines, often amid a
storm of shrapnel, and drop a little cloth bag which contains a note
recording the name of the missing man, or if not his name the number of
his machine, whether he survived, and if so whether he is wounded.
Attached to the “message bag” are long pennants of colored cloth, which
flutter out and attract the attention of the men in the neighborhood,
who run out and pick up the bag when it lands. It is at once taken to
the nearest officer, who opens it and telephones the message it contains
to aviation headquarters, so that it not infrequently happens that the
fate of a flier is known to his comrades within a few hours after he has
set out from the aviation field. Perhaps the prettiest exhibition of
chivalry which the war has produced was evoked by the death of the
famous French aviator, Adolphe Pegoud, who was killed by a German
aviator whom he attacked during a reconnoissance near Petite Croix, in
Alsace. The next day a German aeroplane, flying at a great height,
appeared over Chavannes, an Alsatian village on the old frontier, where
Pegoud was buried, and dropped a wreath which bore the inscription: “To
Pegoud, who died like a hero, from his adversary.”
VII
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY
Corporal Emile Dupont, having finished a most unappetizing and
unsatisfying breakfast, consisting of a cup of lukewarm chicory and a
half-loaf of soggy bread, emerged on all fours from the hole in the
ground which for many months had been his home and, standing upright in
the trench, lighted a cigarette. At that instant something came
screaming out of nowhere to burst, in a cloud of acrid smoke and a
shower of steel splinters, directly over the trench in which Emile was
standing. Immediately the sky seemed to fall upon Emile and crush him.
When he returned to consciousness a few seconds later he found himself
crumpled up in an angle of the trench like an empty kit-bag that has
been hurled into a corner of a room. He felt curiously weak and
nauseated; he ached in every bone in his body; his head throbbed and
pounded until he thought that the top of his skull was coming off.
Still, he was alive, and that was something. He fumbled for the
cigarette that he had been lighting, but there was a curious sensation
of numbness in his right hand. He did not seem to be able to move it.
Very slowly, very painfully he turned his head so that his eyes
travelled out along his blue-sleeved arm until they reached the point
where his hand ought to be. But the hand wasn’t there. It had quite
disappeared. His wrist lay in a pool of something crimson and warm and
sticky which widened rapidly as he looked at it. His hand was gone,
there was no doubting that. Still, it didn’t interest him greatly; in
fact, it might have been some other man’s hand for all he cared. His
head throbbed like the devil and he was very, very tired. Rather dimly
he heard voices and, as through a haze, saw figures bending over him. He
felt some one tugging at the little first-aid packet which every soldier
carries in the breast of his tunic, he felt something being tied very
tightly around his arm above the elbow, and finally he had a vague
recollection of being dragged into a dug-out, where he lay for hours
while the shell-storm raged and howled outside. Along toward nightfall,
when the bombardment had died down, two soldiers, wearing on their arms
white _brassards_ with red crosses, lifted him onto a stretcher and
carried him between interminable walls of brown earth to another and a
larger dug-out which he recognized as a _poste de secours_. After an
hour of waiting, because there were other wounded men who had to be
attended to first, the stretcher on which Emile lay was lifted onto a
table over which hung a lantern. A bearded man, wearing the cap of a
medical officer, and with a white apron up to his neck, briskly unwound
the bandages which hid the place where Emile’s right hand should have
been. “It’ll have to be taken off a bit further up, _mon brave_,” said
the surgeon, in much the same tone that a tailor would use in discussing
the shortening of a coat. “You seem to be in pretty fair shape, though,
so we’ll just give you a new dressing, and send you along to the field
ambulance, where they have more facilities for amputating than we have
here.” Despite the pain, which had now become agonizing, Emile watched
with a sort of detached admiration the neatness and despatch with which
the surgeon wound the white bandages around the wound. It reminded him
of a British soldier putting on his puttees. “Just a moment, my friend,”
said the surgeon, when the dressing was completed, “we’ll give you a jab
of this before you go, to frighten away the tetanus,” and in the muscles
of his shoulder Emile felt the prick of a hypodermic needle. An orderly
tied to a button of his coat a pink tag on which something—he could not
see what—had been scrawled by the surgeon, and two _brancardiers_ lifted
the stretcher and carried him out into the darkness. From the swaying of
the stretcher and the muffled imprecations of the bearers, he gathered
that he was being taken across the ploughed field which separated the
trenches from the highway where the ambulances were waiting. “This
cleans ’em up for to-night,” said one of the bearers, as he slipped the
handles of the stretcher into the grooved supports of the ambulance and
pushed it smoothly home. “Thank God for that,” said the ambulance
driver, as he viciously cranked his car. “I thought I was going to be
kept here all night. It’s time we cleared out anyway. The Boches spotted
me with a rocket they sent up a while back, and they’ve been dropping
shells a little too close to be pleasant. Well, s’long. When I get this
bunch delivered I’m going to turn in and get a night’s sleep.”
The road, being paved with cobblestones, was not as smooth as it should
have been for wounded men. Emile, who had been awakened to full
consciousness by the night air and by a drink of brandy one of the
orderlies at the _poste de secours_ had given him, felt something warm
and sticky falling ... drip ... drip ... drip ... upon his face. In the
dim light he was at first unable to discover where it came from. Then he
saw. It was dripping through the brown canvas of the stretcher that hung
above him. He tried to call to the ambulance driver, but his voice was
lost in the noise of the machine. The field-hospital was only three
miles back of the trench in which he had been wounded, but by the time
he arrived there, what with the jolting and the pain and the terrible
thirst which comes from loss of blood and that ghastly drip ... drip ...
drip in his face, Emile was in a state of both mental and physical
collapse. They took him into a large tent, dimly lighted by lanterns
which showed him many other stretchers with silent or groaning forms,
all ticketed like himself, lying upon them. After considerable delay a
young officer came around with a note-book and looked at the tag they
had tied on him at the dressing-station. On it was scrawled the word
“urgent.” That admonition didn’t prevent Emile’s having to wait two
hours before he was taken into a tent so brilliantly illuminated by an
arc-lamp that the glare hurt his eyes. When they laid him on a narrow
white table so that the light fell full upon him he felt as though he
were on the stage of a theatre and the spot-light had been turned upon
him. An orderly with a sharp knife deftly slashed away the sleeve of
Emile’s coat, leaving the arm bare to the shoulder, while another
orderly clapped over his mouth and nose a sort of funnel.