On the Aisne
Paris was pleasantly tranquil. Folk were returning. The Boulevards
had almost their traditional crowds. At the same time the long lock
upon the Aisne, and the absence of news, had recalled something of the
atmosphere of anxiety and doubt. Rumour was rife. In the usual attempt
to check it, as well as to cover certain military moves, the circle of
the defence was being drawn tighter. All permits were being cancelled.
When I left Paris again, to try and regain the lines on the Aisne, it
was with the knowledge that it would be necessary to take increased
risks, with less chance of getting communicable news. If the position
were to resolve itself, it would be on the north coast; as the result
of a different development of the battle.
North of Paris, Monday night.
The army of the west that I have followed with personal interest
through all its developments during the last weeks is now officially
acknowledged as being in contact with the Germans.
Of the excitement of watching its growth and passage through the north
of France, at Rouen, Beauvais, and Amiens, I shall be able to speak
more fully when the official details as to its composition are allowed
to be made public. "Keep your eye on the west" is all we have been able
to say as reassurance during the two long anxious weeks of assault upon
the profound German trenches on the Aisne.
And now, certainly not too soon, when the Germans have extended
themselves once again in desperate efforts to break through on the
south at Soissons and Rheims, comes the threatening pressure of the
new army upon their lines of communication to the north. Have their
reinforcements, brought from Belgium and the Argonne, come up to check
it in time?
Nor is this all. We have all deduced from the German activity lately
the movement westward and northward of the French troops on our left
wing, up past Clermont and Lassigny. This has of itself been gradually
overlapping the German right. Now it forms a single enveloping arc with
the forces pressing in upon St. Quentin.
It was only when the magnificent fighting on the Aisne made it clearer
day by day that the Germans were fairly held in the south that such a
movement of troops became justifiable. We could reconstruct now where
these troops were drawn from, and the moves of the splendid game that
the Allies have played. But that must wait until the game is played out.
Meanwhile that fearful sacrifice of life upon the Aisne two weeks ago,
fighting unparalleled in history for severity, has gained its object.
Time has been won for the one move that serves to hook the Germans out
of their immense entrenchments. We start the third week of the battle
with easier breath.
There have been many rumours that the Germans were really further south
on the line of the Aisne than public information acknowledged. There
were sections of the line about which nothing was known, and not only
that mysterious west.
It is possible we may hear later that there were anxious days last
week, when Rheims was not the southern boundary of the Germans, nor yet
Soissons; and that some of the ground now slowly won at great cost has
but been regained.
It was to clear this up that I spent to-day travelling behind the whole
line from Rheims to south of Compiègne; approaching it at the vital
points, so as to define the German position. Although there had been
German cars imperilling the road, it proved to be only some of their
reckless skirmishers. We got through, without a rumour of them, to the
heights south of Rheims.
Passing thence east, it was not difficult to place, from sound and
sight, that the Germans lay well east of the town; and that, with the
duel taken to-day more easily on both sides, the French were assailing
them upon the heights of Nogent l'Abbesse.
Their loss of the height of Brimont, on the east, prevents the French
making use of the Canal of the Aisne and Marne, or the adjoining
railway. At the same time, the French retention of the line of heights
of Craonne on the west commands any advance of the Germans upon Rheims
by this route.
Circling away from Rheims to the west, I came up south of the Aisne
and the Craonne heights, by Poncherry and Montigny. Here I met a train
of wounded and some stragglers in the village, who told me of the
sustained assault that is being made upon the French positions; the
Germans making charge after charge, even with the bayonet, but being
repulsed with great loss.
It is obviously vital for the Germans, with the growing pressure on
their flank, to break through on the south, and, by threatening Paris
and separating the armies, to force a withdrawal of troops from their
communications.
I was near enough to the Aisne to be able to see the character of
the country on the far side, which has cost both Britain and France
so dear to assault. A gradual slope of about half a mile up from the
river, steepening into scarps and wooded heights, and dotted with white
quarries. These latter were held by the Germans deeply entrenched, and
their guns commanded the passage of the river.
Driven at last over the edge of the hill, they returned again and
again in massed charges, and were swept away by our men, more lightly
entrenched, high up, just under the brow.
To the west of this, as far as Soissons, the two weeks fighting has
mostly consisted of long-range artillery duels, across the river and,
later, over the heights. The Germans, better hidden, and with longer
range, shelled our slighter trenches with fearful accuracy.
About Soissons the British resisted successfully a concentrated
assault of more than a week's duration, certainly not less in savage
determination than that upon the French around Craonne. Our cavalry
especially distinguished itself.
Several men wounded, or resting from the front, in these villages, told
me the same story: "It began about six--heavy, accurate shell fire;
there was a lunch interval; it stopped about dusk every day. Then in
the night, often came the charges. One night I couldn't count them! It
was awful. Kill, kill, kill, and still they came on, shoving each other
over on to us!"
No man but had his story of comrades on either side shot or smashed
day after day, of the shriek of shells, of the perpetual groaning of
the wounded as they lay in the wet trenches. "Seven days and nights
of it! and some nights only an hour's sleep." And all the same
description--"It was just absolute hell." No one found another word to
describe it.
And the sight of the men bore it out. Muddied to the eyes, soaked,
often blood-caked. Many were suffering from the curious aphasia
produced by the continuous concussion of shells bursting. Some were
dazed and speechless, some deafened. And yet, splendid to relate, I
saw on no Briton's face, wounded or resting, the fixed, inhuman stare
of war. Even the wounded were in good spirits, unconquerable,--the
sporting "looker-on" attitude of the British soldier.
I scrawled a line of letter for some of them; they all wanted it said
that it had been "hell"; that they were glad to be out; but not sorry
to have been in. Many wanted advice added to "brother Tom" or "cousin
Dick" not to rush into it; but they knew themselves, as anyone who
knows the breed would know, that it was just that scrap that would make
Tom or Harry mad that he had not been in it too!
The French were more absorbed and aloof, less of "professional"
fighters. They could not do without the personal touch. A little group
of the Line sat before a burnt cottage sharpening and caressing their
bayonets--"Rosalie" they call them, for love of their bloodstained
edges.
Soissons has suffered little less than Rheims. Not from fire as yet,
but six or more dark, jagged holes showed where the cathedral has been
shelled. The town looks more than half in desolate ruins.
The fighting here has been indescribably fierce. At Bucy-le-Long, just
to the north-east, the Germans dropped shells into a school converted
into a Red Cross ambulance, killing many wounded. One of the wounded
assistants described the scene. "They didn't intend it, probably; we
had troops coming up just behind, and they're poor shots!"
Description of the sights and sounds of past battlefields are
monotonously grim, and useless to repeat. But the villages and country
in the track of this long battle, along the south of the Aisne, cannot
be left unmentioned, if war is to be recognised as reality.
To move here is to move in a country of abandoned trenches, half used
as graves; to move through the tainted air of the unburied; to see the
countless dead, broken life, broken humanity, burning, or being thrust,
with the fortunate callousness of the peasant, into trench and pit;
to meet at every turn some deadly reminder of mortality; to see every
house and field flecked with some pitiable wreck or litter of battle.
The details need not even be imagined.
But the wounded, as I saw them, returning in car and train, lying in
temporary shelters or waiting their turn at wayside stations, are at
once a more painful, more real reminder. British, and French, and
African, side by side, patient, courageous, appreciative of the little
help that can be given by the few hands. It is the one sight that can
still move one--that look of youth and hope struck out of the face
of the young soldier, the dulled expression, of just clinging on to
consciousness of life, that alone survives.
At Villers Cotterets and Crepy I saw and talked with many of them;
but not for news of their exploits. We shared a common weariness
of war-talk--the details were too present; and most of them
characteristically, when they had asked for news about "the victory,"
spoke most of the peasants, and the hardship and suffering they had
seen in the villages; very little about themselves or the friends they
had seen killed.
South of Rheims, Tuesday.
With even more difficulty to-day we made our way up again into the
battle region. Rheims was the first object. I managed to get to a point
where I could look down and out at the city from its southern heights.
Picture it for yourself, the long, rolling, wooded circle of hills, the
broad green plateau of trees and houses, dipping to the irregular town;
and in the centre, an immense landmark, the high, grey cathedral, with
its two crowned towers of elaborate stone-work.
At the first view, in the grey daylight and the roar of the wind,
nothing seemed unusual. The outlines of tower and town looked as
before. Then I put up the field glasses, and in a second the sight
fell to pieces, with the sudden incongruousness of the destruction of
Pompeii or Jerusalem as we see it on the coloured moving pictures, when
the walls fall flat under red artificial flames, and in a second the
towns remain only geometric sections of black ruins.
The roofs were there, but shattered into dark caverns of bombardment.
The gables stood, blank, and with windows transparent to the sky. The
streets, scarred white or in dark hollows of crumbled brick. And the
Cathedral? The walls were standing, the towers, and much of the roof,
but blackened and defaced. The towers, blurred in detail and fractured.
The windows, with tracery shattered, and blinking as it were painfully
at the unusual daylight that streamed in upon the black ruin of the
nave.
And over all the grey haze of conflagration, mixing in one dark
overhanging curtain with the yellow pestilent fumes of past bombardment.
Beyond, on the further heights, the grey sky was seamed with the spurt
and smoke of occasional bursting shells; and the ear, guided now
by the eye, could distinguish from the rush of the wind the single
explosions of the German shells and the nearer crash of the hidden
French batteries, as they responded, firing across the hill at the
unseen army.
I would not, even if it had been easy, have approached nearer. Details
of destruction could add nothing to the realisation of these monstrous
reactions of war. This was, to myself, the second conscious shock in
all the two months of warfare--Louvain was the first. The sight of
dead and shattered bodies soon passes unrealised. There is nothing of
the man who lived, even if we have known him well, left in lifeless
remnants. What he meant and what he produced are no longer there.
But to see a dead or an injured child, a mutilated work of art or
thought, is to see the murder of men's souls: the defacing of the ideal
which men live and die to conceive, to embody, and to leave as their
contribution to the eternal principles of beauty and continuance.
What has provoked this wanton, deliberate destruction? The anger of
disappointed, hungry, chilled men in their realisation of failure and
fatigue? The revenge for the death of some popular commander, some
General von Revel, von Rapine, or von Ruin? Who can say yet? On the
spot there seemed to be no "military" excuse, of tactics or precaution.
It looked like the irresponsible outrage of a tipsy child with a heavy
hammer. Whatever the conditions of ultimate peace, let us see to it
that the hammer of ponderous armaments is forced from Germany's hands.
The "philosophical Teuton brain" may then have time to clear itself of
the fumes of a reeling militarism.
The tapestries have been buried. It is reported that the treasures of
the Cathedral are safe. Why, O why, was no effort made to remove the
priceless windows in time? We did it in our Minsters as long ago as
the seventeenth century, before the threat of bombardment; and the
confidence in German "culture" cannot have been so deep-rooted!
I was glad that I could not see the injury to the famous "rose" window
in the west front, through which the sunset used to colour the pillars
of the nave with a marvellous amber and gold light.
As I passed by the town I met the venerable Cardinal Archbishop, in
his robes, a strange contrast to the knots of uniformed soldiers and
the few darkly-dressed, depressed inhabitants. He reached Paris, from
the Conclave, two days ago, and, impatient of the absence of news, has
come out to see for himself what has befallen his cathedral; and that
in spite of the German raiding cars, that have fired on passengers on
the roads from Paris yesterday and to-day, and of the proximity of the
cannon. I took off my hat to a very gallant man.
But a week or so ago I stood up and cheered the grand old Bishop of
Meaux, when, as one of the first civilians to get into Meaux after the
battle of the Marne, I found him, in violet robes, still going gently
round, looking after his few surviving flock. He, almost alone, had
refused to leave the town, and endured all the risks of the encircling
battles and the indignities of the German occupation.
The Germans have made no exception of priests and professors in
their "disciplinary executions," and now that they have started on
the cathedrals--first Louvain, then Malines, then Rheims, and now
Soissons--a bishop who stayed to face them showed a good man's courage.
Wednesday.
In a village south of Rheims this morning I was delayed for some time
by the passing of a column of German captives, being brought down from
Craonne by the French. There must have been more than a thousand in
this single division. Some of them were big fine fellows; a number
quite lads; all looked pallid and with the strained look of fatigue and
hunger. A few were allowed to sit a while by the road, to rest sore
feet.
Those to whom I spoke, allowing for the fact that they were frightened
and probably anxious to propitiate, confirmed the impression that the
Germans have lost very heavily and are in sore straits for food. They
spoke of the practical destruction of whole regiments, more especially
in the assaults round Soissons and Rheims. To the audacity and
omnipresence of our airmen, and to the accuracy of our shell-fire on
their trenches, their accounts bore constant witness.
One lad, a "Sextaner" in an Ober-Realschale, was allowed to rest for
some time, and soon began to talk quite cheerfully. He showed me his
pocket diary, a strange little document. It contained chiefly the
notices of his messing together with six or more of his chums, and of
the rare additions of food other than rations. On later pages came the
little notes of someone missing in the evening. A few new names were
added. These, too, disappeared. Finally, almost the last entry, of
four days ago, came the sentence, "Remains only Max and me." But Max
was not with the prisoners.
At certain of the base villages as I followed the line south of
the Aisne, I saw other prisoners, active and willing as ambulance
orderlies. They were already moving about cheerfully--the French are
most kindly captors--but none of them had lost the stamp of pallor
imprinted by the exhaustion and strain of that prolonged fighting
march. Not one but was tired of the "useless war." It is only the
stay-at-homes who have not lived in a war atmosphere, for whom it
retains its colour of heroics after a few weeks of its squalid
realities.
I crossed the Vesle, on a pontoon bridge, and visited two of the seven
bridges which the Germans destroyed as they retired before the British
over the Aisne near Soissons. A south country Briton told me the story
of that first crossing.
"We were the advance division. We got there at nightfall, a desperate
long march. The Germans had dynamited seven out of the eight bridges,
but one just stood. We were ordered to shuffle across it singly, at ten
yards intervals. It began at midnight, in the dark, a queer, nervous
job; and we weren't all over, quite, by five in the morning. Two of the
chaps slipped in, astray in the dark, one just ahead of me. I thought
it was the bridge going up--the sort of 'plump' he went!"
I have had that feeling several times these last weeks, the stealthy
crawl across the bridge with dynamite already laid below it.
North of the forest of Villers, the region which is a grim cemetery
of men and of the homes of men, full of the smoke and dust of ruined
houses and of the smoke and dust of burning piles of what were men,
many soldiers were still lying on straw under shelter from the rain,
waiting their turn to be fetched down by the ambulances. There are
scores still waiting.
For one I took down a letter. This is its substance: "Jack and me were
in that show at Shivers (Chivres-sur-Aisne?) It was not man-fighting
that week; just banging with engines over our heads, and getting them
too, often enough. When it got dark, 'they' always rang off. And we
went out, not under orders, just for our turn; about six of us. Jack
got a sentry--here--and we got to the pit; but they were on us before
we could mess the gun; and it was pretty fair hell in the dark; just
jabbing at anything you heard or touched. Three of us got back; and we
left 'them' some burying to do on their own, too."
The valley of the Aisne has a deadly sameness. At Retheuil and Chelles,
the silent apathetic peasants--all too few--were heaping remains of men
and horses for burning, or dragging them into the long raw trenches
that scar the fields with white issues of lime. Anything of value or
metal is dragged off, the bodies thrust in, and, for all the pestilent
air, the peasant stolidly munches at his bread between whiles.
It is astonishing how little it affects one after a day or two. I
don't believe the sight or sound of always present death, or even, for
that matter, the more intolerable affliction of sleepless nights, wet
trenches, cold winds, and continuous strain, has taken five minutes of
his quaint optimism from the British soldier. And yet this war is being
fought without the exciting accompaniment of bands or drums. There are
no parade sights; no colour.
It is almost impossible to get the names of their places of past
adventure from the soldiers. The French names, if ever heard, are soon
forgotten. It is exciting to them even to hear that they are near
Paris. They date from "where So-and-so got hit," or "where we got those
fags from a hofficer," or where "the women ran out to give us drinks
as we rode by." Very often the name survives as a mysterious village
called "Ralentir." (Visitors to France may remember that this is the
big notice put up outside villages, the "Drive slowly" warning to
motorists.)
It was curious to recall, as I looked north later in the day towards
Vic-sur-Aisne, that I got almost as far as this a fortnight ago, after
the German retreat from Meaux, thinking I was well behind our armies,
and found and smoked in, their line of abandoned trenches, in the
company of two incursious peasants. The Germans were even then making
their huge entrenchments on the hills ahead, and it was to cost a
fortnight's fearful fighting before our men made good their position on
my seemingly lonely slope of fields.
We were "requisitioned" again, to run to Mont St. Marc. As I looked
across at the Forest of Laigue, I knew now that the check that turned
me back in those woods last week, after swimming the Oise, was one of
the violent counter-attacks by the Germans; when they ventured, as they
rarely have done, to charge with the bayonet.
On that same day, the bombardment which I heard from the direction
of Lassigny, proves now to have been the beginning of the French
resistance to the German advance in that quarter against General
Castelnau.
At Crepy, on the return, a Turco, whom I must have met at the fierce
skirmish south-east of Peronne, recognised me as he lay, a strange
figure white with loss of blood under his African tan, his turban and
brilliant uniform bloodstained, waiting to be moved into an ambulance
car.
"Ah, they got me for a time, not long"--it was odd French--"but I
assisted two with that, first (the bayonet), and then there remained to
me these" (a significant gesture of the hands).
A badly-wounded north countryman, who lay beside him, with a nurse
temporarily bandaging his shoulder--another shrapnel wound; they are
nearly all shrapnel wounds--evidently understand the gesture, if not
the lingo. "Fine chaps at a scrap, the darkies. It's funny, though, I
couldn't use hands like that; sort of claws fashion. Now I could go on
with a fist--this way--all day; just smash them. Some difference in
education, d'you think? Or just natural?"
The nurse stopped the speculative opening. But think of it; in
the surroundings! Our undefeated British soldier, tolerant of the
individual, critical of the "foreign ways," ready to argue an
abstraction, to fight, to make or be turned into a joke, even while
every breath was a painful effort.
Thursday.
There has been a lull in the fierceness of the struggle along the
Aisne, which is developing into the Battle of the Rivers. (_Note_: I
believe this to have been the first time this name was suggested.) The
lull is doubtless not unconnected with the great changes of front in
progress. Some days ago I was involved in the movement of the French
forces round the left wing by Clermont; later, to-day I was to learn
from an airman of the even greater rapidity with which the Germans have
poured their reinforcements, and their army from the Vosges, on to the
line of the Oise towards Peronne. (It was the mass of these troops,
and the rapidity of their swing across on the inner lines, that enabled
the Germans to anticipate the Allies' move and, for a time, even push
them back at certain points, at Lassigny, Chaulnes, and Peronne, as we
now learn from the official communications.)
To-day was my last visit to the lines on the Aisne, the last
opportunity of seeing something of the actual fighting. We reached
Fismes early in the day, and, as there were rumours in Paris that the
Germans had penetrated south in this region, we were relieved to find
an extremely peaceful landscape. Only the usual traces in the villages
and on the fields of past fighting.
Here fortune favoured us. For several weeks we had been inquiring in
vain on all our excursions for a certain French regiment of the line,
which contained the much-loved brother of my friend and driver. At
Fismes we came by chance upon a small section of his company, who were
escorting some wounded. We fraternised at once; and they told us where
we should find him, engaged in the trenches across the Aisne. Not only
this, but they gladly took advantage of the car to run four of them
back to their advance post, or rather as far as was permitted us, under
their helpful escort.
On foot we traversed the last fields to the bank of the river. The
appearance of this grim border region of past battle, the burnt
cottages, scarred fields, blackened trees, and the faintly-marked
trenches and pyres of the buried and incinerated dead, has been already
described. There is a terrible monotony in such scenes.
The Aisne was crossed on a light pontoon, for foot soldiers only. I
will not specify the point nearer than to say that we were behind a
notable junction of the allied armies. A low spur, rather exceptionally
tree-covered, came down close to the bank on the far side. In a
temporary base-camp, of shelters and enlarged trenches, under the spur,
the much-sought brother greeted us, and a very cordial welcome was
given us on his account. A lieutenant was in charge, who invited us to
share the combined rations. The staple was a loaf of bread, hollowed
out and filled with some very highly scented sort of tripe; apparently
a popular and certainly a filling meal. Actually, too, hot coffee in
pannikins. We contributed the usual cigarettes and journals.
The lieutenant did not see his way to letting me go forward, although
the German fire on our trenches ahead had ceased for some time, and
the only sound of guns came from some distance away, in the direction
of Craonne. The time passed, however, unnoticed, in the interest of
watching the movements of sections passing and repassing the river, in
relief or support. Twice a number of wounded were carried past and over
the bridge. They were still being collected, or brought down, after
the desperate German assaults by night and day that preceded the lull.
Three small detachments stopped in passing, moving up to the front.
They were all sun-browned, rough-chinned men here. Some had been in
the trenches for a week or more, and looked fine-drawn and battered.
They were uninterested but confident. Not the sort of gallant gaiety
and glitter we are accustomed to associate with the traditional French
soldier. That, if it survived the parade times, has given place to a
serious intentness upon the one idea, a kind of setting of the teeth to
face the issue and force the victory. For the French soldier has more
imagination than ours. He has to make up his mind not to picture to
himself results and effects which our men simply disregard, as not part
of their particular professional concern.
The stories they told had necessarily great resemblance. Of hours of
crouching under well-directed shell-fire. Of men killed or decapitated
beside them, of hairbreadth escapes from shrapnel, of confused night
attacks, of the joy of using "Rosalie" upon the hated grey bodies,
when at last they got the chance. And, above all, of the continuous,
dreadful noise of the guns and of the shells passing. Several were
partially deafened or stupefied by the concussion. A few told of
comrades who, not from failure of nerve, but from the mere physical,
shattering effect of the perpetual roar and scream upon more nervous
systems, had had to be sent back for a time from the line. And "spy"
stories, as numerous as ingenious.
After an hour or so the "brother" had to go up to take his turn in
the trenches with others. Our officer had gone off in the interval
at a summons; and the sergeant left in charge--we were now firm
friends--agreed to let me go up a specified distance for a certain time
with the section moving out.
We turned to the right round the end of the spur, about thirty of us,
ascending diagonally up the side, with a parallel valley receding below
us. I had been given directions as to how we were to take advantage
of the natural cover, and in places where we should have been more
exposed to observation from heights or airmen this cover had been very
ingeniously supplemented.
The firing from the greater plateau towards Craonne grew more distinct,
but even so it seemed to be none too vigorously prosecuted. The
cautious approach along the wet green slope towards a real, if distant,
enemy, revived the feelings of keen excitement of our man-hunting game
in the Lake Fells. But in the valley bottom, and occasionally on our
slope, there were harsh reminders of reality in the pits of shells,
broken trees, the litter in abandoned trenches, and here and there the
unburied German dead. A number of peasants were engaged in removing
these last traces, in the more sheltered depressions. But, as the
corporal explained with a shrug, "What would you? If they see where we
are, they fire. We cannot risk the good living for _those_!"
All too soon, as it seemed, we reached the advanced point where on an
upward slope, the work of pushing forward diagonal trenches was going
on. On our left the hill hid the view; but across the valley, on the
right, the same active, methodical work was just visible in the slight
stir and occasional glint of mattock or red trouser. With a gesture
my attention was drawn to a carefully concealed battery. I doubt if I
should have seen it for myself. "They haven't marked that down yet;
that's for a surprise when they begin again!"
We crossed a system of narrow man-deep galleries, well-covered, and
which had evidently been heavily shelled. I was hurried forward through
this, now with even more caution. "They've got the range of this; but
we're out there now":--and the "brother" indicated a point a third of
a mile ahead, where, it seemed, a sap was being carried forward, on a
zigzag towards the crest. Just as we were advancing, the unmistakable
moan of an aeroplane sent us to cover, under the old entrenchment.
I failed to see it; but a sudden outburst of firing on our left,
that died away again, gave the line of its passage. "You may expect
something here, after that----has been over," was the remark, made to
me, I think, with half malicious intention.
In a small pit or field-quarry on the slope, of innocent appearance,
but in reality converted into a very adequate straw-lined shelter or
base for the men engaged in digging beyond, I was left; while the
section moved forward to take the places of others. These, when they
came down, would see me back again. I saw the "brother" leave me with
regret. My companions were four men and a corporal, rather glum and
tired, but not unfriendly. Two had been slightly wounded, but had
refused to go down.
We had barely got on to terms, with grateful cigarettes, when a single
growl echoed across the slope in front; and the unmistakable crescendo
whine of a shell passed high and to one side above us. It was followed
by another, which shrilled its menace more directly overhead; and the
flat, quaking explosion, hitting the ear like a blow, could be heard
further down over the slope. The men paid scarcely any attention. "It
will not go on; we shall not reply," said one. "Reassure yourself: it
is at our old trenches," added one of the wounded men, with half a
grin. The sensation of being shelled over is denied to the civilian;
and in my own case the opportunity was probably unique. I risked the
reputation for unconcern of the race, and crept out and up under the
higher lip of the depression; from here, well sheltered, I could look
backward and down the slope.
Four more shells passed in quick succession. The roar of the discharges
rolled in a continuous echo back and across the little valley; through
this the singing scream of the shells stabbed venomously. One fell
beyond the old trenches, and exploded in the ground--I saw the huge
shattered cavity as I returned. Two burst accurately, man high, over
the earthworks, faced with sods, of the abandoned gallery; the sight
and sound were indescribably shocking to the unaccustomed eye and ear.
The last did not explode, but, from the spurt of earth, buried itself
deeply twenty yards nearer me up the slope.
As I had been told, no reply was made in this quarter, and no more
followed the six. A quarter of an hour later the returning section
came back; and again, with an escort of twenty dumb, earth-stained,
and hungry blue-coats, the cautious return was begun. As we got down
the caution was dropped. "They don't want it to-day any more than we
do"--and we clustered in a quick walk back to the base.
As an impression of the futility of warfare, the sight of this useful
manhood, designed to dig a fruitful soil for profitable living, now
burrowing for life in barren trenches, was sufficient. As an impression
of its hideous trespass, the intrusion of those discordant shells,
shrieking over the sunlit hill with a sort of murderous absurdity,
splitting the still air into shreds of hateful noise, and vanishing
against the motionless trees in drifting clots of sickly green vapour,
was all complete. If further proof were needed, it lay about me in the
melancholy accidents of destruction, scattered over the "no man's land"
that I recrossed on my return. The whole suggestion was of some recent,
sordid violent orgy, by a party of criminal tramps, in a peaceful
garden.
Many of the bridges were broken down, and, after rejoining the car,
we had to make a wide sweep to the west. The roads were blocked by
the wagons and columns of the French westward movement. I passed
again through Crepy and Senlis, and round west of Clermont, which was
obviously in the agitated condition peculiar to a military occupation.
The distinctness with which the guns could be heard from the St. Just
road, suggested that the Germans had advanced considerably to the
west, since I had last heard them from the south of Lassigny. From
Montdidier we turned east, hoping to get to Roye; but it was getting
late and the road became hopelessly congested. An aviator whose
machine had been injured and to whom I was able to give a lift, told
me that he had seen the German reinforcements pouring up in very great
numbers behind the Oise; and it was clear that, for the moment, their
possession of the inner lines had given them the advantage in forming
on the new front.
Through by-lanes west of Roye we made towards Rosières in the dark,
hoping to hit a main road back towards Amiens. We were stopped again by
the sound of firing in front and a little to the east. Before turning
back we determined, if possible, to discover its meaning. Leaving the
car in a field, the driver and I walked forward cautiously through the
woods in the direction of the sound. We were in one of the big hangars
of large forest trees that crown the crests of the rolling uplands in
this district. As we came out of the wood, and just across the crest,
there came a sudden crackle of rifle firing from the trees on the
opposite crest, about a mile and a half, so far as I could calculate
in the dark, to the east. For the moment it was difficult to account
for it; but the driver suddenly called my attention to some little
sparks of flame in the dark sky. They seemed to be dropping on to the
far wood. The reason at once suggested itself:--a daring German airman,
making a night flight, had located a detachment of the French in the
wood, probably by their camp fires, and was dropping little balls
of flame to give the range to his associated battery. A few minutes
later the dull boom of heavier guns, firing from a greater distance,
which continued for some fifteen minutes, and then ceased, made our
speculation a certainty. It was a curiously suggestive glimpse; the
darkness lit and broken for a moment, declaring the presence of the
unceasing, sleepless strife.
It was clearly not possible to force our way further north; and, as
it was now too late to gain entry into any town of shelter, we spent a
not uncomfortable night, sleeping in and beside the car. With the first
light we turned west and south, and regained Paris almost as soon as
the gates were opened.