Barrow's unit had suffered sorely, but its gaps were filled from other
sources and fresh supplies received from home. Close upon the middle of
August it moved to take the field. This delay had not been without
advantages, perhaps the chief of which was a fluency in French that many
of his men were able to acquire. It had also given Jeb an opportunity to
acquire an entirely new viewpoint regarding the purposes of this war,
which had not penetrated to Hillsdale.
As the train now proceeded slowly, switching here and there to let other
strings of cars pass toward the front with more important freight, Jeb
felt that he was at last nearing the great adventure. His experience
with the submarine left an indelible effect without producing anything
like the result Tim would have desired. For Jeb had been involuntarily
projected into that crisis before being given time to think; he had
gone with the stream, not buoyed by courage but spurred by despair. Once
tossed into the hideous vortex, he simply had to get out--which was
vastly different from deliberately going into it with eyes ahead, as now
when he approached the battle front! Nevertheless, the torture he faced
upon the floating box, although unknown to him, left an impress for the
good.
As he sat uncomfortably drawn up on the seat of a third-class
compartment he missed Tim, and wondered dully if the regiment, which
that little son of Mars had said was waiting for him--at
attention!--could now be in the thick of things. He pictured Tim chasing
Germans with the same dogged nerve that he had chased and caught the
murderer of the little nurse. As evening fell, battle scenes grew vivid
in the twilit compartment, because he was thinking again! Whenever
speeding trains passed, their approaching rumbles would make him start,
and leave him sick in spirit; for each time he would at first mistake
them for the growling of distant guns, and he dreaded the hour when
these sounds would reach him. He despised the thought of guns, despised
the military trains, despised the war, the blood and maiming;--he
despised himself. He needed Tim!
"Is there anything on your mind, old fellow?" one of the unit asked him
kindly.
"Oh, no," he forced himself to laugh. "Have a cigarette, won't you?"
Early next morning, after an almost sleepless night, the unit
disembarked at a village standing as a solitary outpost on the edge of a
great unknown wilderness. Beyond this point the railroad, even
civilization, had been paralyzed by the dragon that fed upon humanity.
If Jeb expected the villagers to be out in force to greet Barrow's unit,
he was disappointed; for, with the exception of a crippled man
laboriously pushing a cart, a nun who with bowed head came from one
doorway and hurried into another, and a bent old woman struggling to
take down the night shutters from her shop window, the place might have
been deserted. On the far side of his train, however, where he had not
looked, a group of soldiers lounged about their wagons waiting to take
these passengers of mercy forward; unshaven chaps they were, well
meriting the nickname of _poilus_--"the hairy ones."
Now that the train had stopped he could hear the far-off growling of
guns; deep-voiced monsters which his imagination pictured straining on
their leashes while snarling at each other across the space of
miles--truly dogs of war! He drew farther back in the seat, dreading to
get out; but the moment had come, the fellows and nurses were moving to
the door, the great task was at hand! He tried, while standing, to
simulate indifference, but his legs were weak and his teeth chattered,
just a little, in spite of his effort to control himself. It seemed as
if he were forever wanting to yawn, conscious of the heaviness upon his
chest.
With Dr. Barrow and a lieutenant on the first creaking wagon, the others
followed, but there was no road. A morass was there, that formerly had
been a road--a ditch sloshy with mud which, in some places, made it
necessary for all hands to climb down and put their shoulders to the
wheels.
"It is trying, this traveling in limbers," the lieutenant smiled
apologetically. "The incessant hauling up of shells from our bases
destroys the best of roads in a few days. But what would you?" he
shrugged, smiling again. "If the ammunition dumps are constantly
depleted, they must be fed!"
The far-off French artillery, in skillfully emplaced positions to right
and left, seeming to enfilade on a point immediately ahead, was so
vigorously directed that the German guns must have been dazed, since
their counter-battery work sounded spasmodic and--so far as distance
permitted Jeb to guess--never effective. Yet he was moving toward that
tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon
this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though
he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to
snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to
the driver, asking--but fearful of the answer:
"Who's winning this battle?"
It was spoken only in Hillsdale French, aided by a two months stop in
Paris; but his poilu companion smiled brightly and replied in the
average Paris English:
"Oh, Monsieur, there is now for three days what you call _moment
decalme_. Tomorrow, if no rain, _oui_!--perhaps a ver' fine battle!"
Then this was a lull!--this cannonading, that to Jeb seemed reaching
from skyline to skyline, was only a lull! Merciful God, he cried in his
soul, what might a battle be like!
By midday, after hours of frightful tugging, they were halfway on their
journey, being well out on what two weeks ago was the battle field, but
now presenting a picture of broadcast desolation. Shell craters, caused
by heavier projectiles burrowing and bursting, pockmarked the ground
like a telescopic photograph of the moon. Fields, so lately rich with
waving grain, were blasted into subsidences and cavities, bisected by
crumbled trenches before which the wreckage of barbed-wire
entanglements--a fortnight since forming barriers so impregnable as to
resemble from a distance walls of red rust--lay snarled and tied into a
million knots by the ruthless lyddite fingers.
It was a pastoral landscape distorted by the paralysis of suffering and
death, and Jeb realized that not for many years would these tortured
fields regain their tranquillity. Where were rises, now lay depressions;
the loamy top soil was blown into dust and scattered to the winds, while
sterile clay and pebbly strata had been boiled up from below to take its
place. Mixed with this mass of unprofitable earth, strewn over its
surface and buried for a depth of thirty feet, were thousands of tons of
other wire, iron stakes, and wire stanchions; cartridge cases, rifles,
and gas gongs; sand bags, iron scraps, and forge tools; steel helmets,
spades, and telephones; pieces of uniforms, water pipes, pick axes, gas
masks, binoculars, trench periscopes, blankets, surgical dressings,
boots, aye, and human bones--all, all things which the plow shares of
coming generations would be turning up to remind man (should man ever
forget) that Humanity had once been outraged by a people who, although
made in the imitation of Christ, preferred to assume the habits of
beasts.
"How, in the name of God," Jeb cried, "could any army stand before such
a blasting as must have been here!"
"Our army did, Monsieur," the driver said quietly. "It not only stood,
but drove the Boche far back."
"Well, I take off my hat to your army!"
"The world does, also, Monsieur," his companion replied; although it was
modestly spoken, without a hint of boastfulness. "We do not fight like
the Boche, Monsieur," he added simply. "Their methods are more like a
mob with a bad conscience; they fight more with a dread of being
defeated than with the honesty of soldiers who have an honest cause."
He then explained to Jeb that these fields, after all, represented
merely the face to face struggle of man and man, and were therefore less
sickening than the devastation they would see farther on, which stood as
a monument to the enemy's vilest cupidity. This became apparent when
they began to cross that stretch of country gloatingly described by
German newspapers as "the empire of death"--meaning a territory seven or
eight miles in width, extending over the entire front, which by order of
"the High German Command" was converted absolutely into waste. Forced by
the Allies to retreat, this "High German Command" conceived that, by
leaving a barrier of desolation and cruelty so terrible, no army would
be hardy enough, or have heart enough, to advance across it. Their
system was complete, as the results now showed--although their
calculations had gone wrong.
"First, Monsieur," he said, "they began by robbing the American Relief
Committee's supplies, immediately following their solemn pledge to
permit this food to succor the starving peasantry; therefore those
pitiable folk, already tragic human wrecks, continued to starve. Next
they killed these peasants' cows to fill their own precious bellies, and
then the little babies began, by slow starvation, to die. But the men,
women, and boys old enough to till the soil, or work in German
factories, were fed and sent away; the girls pretty enough to wait upon
German officers--you know what that means, Monsieur--were dressed in
stolen finery and, weeping, driven to their new positions--six hundred
of them taken from within the space that you are looking on now,
although we have learned that many succeeded in killing themselves. Only
the helpless aged and the babes escaped these brutalities; for they,
being useless, were left to the mercy of the vultures, unless salvaged
by our army. Right on this ground we saved many such, Monsieur; _Mon
Dieu!_ but how our army did weep over them!"
Jeb had already seen enough to bring this recital well within the focus
of truth, and as the wagons wound slowly forward he further saw to what
depth of hatred and cold malice the mind of that "High Command"
descended. Burned villages and hamlets might have been expected, as
conflagrations spring from bursting shells, yet even his inexperienced
eye detected a very sharp distinction between ruins wrought by military
operations and the vandalism caused by unbridled, bestial passions. For
nowhere upon this barren outlook had a house been left standing--all was
a mass of tumbled brick and stone and clay and twisted timbers, licked
by flames or crumbled by explosions scientifically placed by German
engineers; nay, nor was there even a barn, nor an agricultural implement
with which some palsied peasant woman might in time reclaim her land.
Iron of plows, of harrows, of cultivators, lay in piles amidst the
ashes of their frames; spokes of wagon and cart wheels had been hacked
to splinters, and harness cut into useless bits. Wells had been fouled
by chucking in their own dead, or stable refuse. In the orchards every
tree stood girdled, the immature fruit wrinkled amidst withered leaves.
Never again, unless French nurserymen sped here hastily to bridge from
bark to bark, or graft onto the old stumps,--as they had elsewhere
attempted with varying promise--would these slopes of arboriculture put
forth buds; neither would the poplars, planes, mulberries, willows--all
had been granted citizenship to this newly created German Empire, "the
empire of death."
"Where are those whom you did not salvage--I mean the girls? Are they
still in the German lines?" Jeb asked.
"Not if they have found a way to die," his comrade answered in a
whisper. "The Belshazzar feast of those Prussian swine, Monsieur, is the
Calvary of every maid who does not find a swifter way to God--but the
debauched officers know that, and keep them closely guarded. Oh," he
cried, "our hearts give thanks that your country is coming to help us
avenge these things! All along we have said that if the American spirit
of decency and fairness--so well known and loved by us--could but see
even the little which you have seen, your armies would be pouring to our
aid!--just as your wonderful nurses have come!"
Jeb felt a rush of self-righteous anger that for the moment transcended
his horror of going forward. While in Paris he had read official
translations from the German press; now with his own eyes he was looking
upon the things gloatingly described in the _Berliner Tageblatt_[1] when
it told the people of Berlin: "The enemy's mouth must stay dry, his eyes
turn in vain to the wells--they are buried in rubble. No four walls for
him to settle down into; all levelled and burnt out, the villages turned
into dumps of rubbish, churches and church towers laid out in ruins.
Smouldering fires and smoke and stench; a rumble spreading from village
to village--the mine charges still doing their final work, which leaves
nothing more to do."
[Footnote 1: _Berliner Tageblatt._ March 26, 1917.]
It was a cry of false triumph that must have stirred the German
soul to joy, because the very next day, he now remembered, the
_Lokalanzeiger_[2] had boastfully added: "No village or farm was left
standing, no road was left passable, no railroad track or embankment,
nothing, nothing whatever, not a tub, not a bench for those who will
succeed them in the abandoned places. _What they could not take with
them they have burnt or smashed._ In front of our new positions runs an
Empire of Death--a Death which lays the shrivelled hands of destruction
upon _all the works of Man and all the bloom of Nature_." This, "by
order of the High German Command."
[Footnote 2: _Berlin Lokalanzeiger_, March 27, 1917.]
It was the last word of Barbarity! But what the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and
the _Lokalanzeiger_ did not tell their readers, Jeb now realized with a
shudder, would have made a chapter of degeneracy and revolting crime
unparalleled in history.
Yet, even in the face of this, he turned sick at the thought of going
forward to the certain annihilation awaiting him in that ghostly
wilderness of mist and wet and wreckage ahead. On the other hand, how
in God's name could he keep from going, he asked himself, when the blood
of innocents was calling on every side! He felt again the "something
strong within him which commanded";--but he hated it!
Had Dr. Barrow been sufficiently skillful with the knife, he might have
dissected out this better Jeb who insisted on going forward, and let the
other crawl into a shell hole to hide for the rest of time; then both
Jebs would have been supremely satisfied. But, being first and foremost
a courageous man, he did not suspect that any one of his unit could
possibly falter. Jeb knew this, and it made him feel all the more alone.
They reached a rise in the rolling landscape and stopped to breathe
their beasts which were shaking the heavy limbers by their desperate
gasps for air. The ground sloped down and up again, and there, protected
from the enemy, a new world came into view--a world wherein American,
French and English engineers, commanding an army of construction, worked
feverishly, as ants. For an instant the nobler Jeb prevailed, and he
raised his eyes in a mute prayer of thankfulness for this trio of
forces--the strongest combination the world has ever seen! The rumbling
cannon ceased to jar his nerves, while he gazed wistfully at the low
clouds sweeping by in companies that seemed to hasten from this theatre
of wrath. Occasional gusts of white smoke burst into being just beneath
them and hung a moment suspended before racing on; or a distant squirt
of lace-like shrapnel, curving ever downward, came to see what went on
behind the Allied lines.
Beyond these gusts and squirts of man-made clouds, observation
balloons--the "sausages" of the enemy--floated motionless above the
horizon, sometimes catching a fleck of sunlight and glistening like dull
silver. There were no German fliers in the air that day, but high above,
as gray vultures hungrily soaring over one spot, two American, two
British and four French airmen glided back and forth, in and out,
circling, circling. With such grace and ease did they pirouette through
their reconnaisance that Jeb was reminded of an aerial quadrille being
danced five thousand feet above the earth; or, seeming to tire of this,
one of them would change the play to hide-and-seek, point toward the
translucent blue and scoot behind a cloud, with the others following. It
was a cordial invitation for the Boche to come up and fight! Jeb did not
see them again for several minutes, but he noticed that one of the kite
balloons suddenly burst into a little puff of flame and disappeared.
Unconsciously, he grinned.
"_Sacre bleu!_" the _poilu_ cried delightedly. "More honor to our
'75's'!"
"I thought the planes did it!" Jeb turned in surprise.
"Oh, no, Monsieur! That was done by one of our guns six miles away!"
Below the pirouetting airmen there was no poetry of motion. Here men
strained and panted and wiped grimy sweat from their eyes. A month ago
this ground ahead had been vigorously contested--the very spot on which
Jeb now stood had been well within the German lines.
In the thoroughness with which the engineers were making fast their
gains, a military observer would have read that not only would the
Allied army draw the sting from this "empire of death," but that never
again would this part of France be yielded to alien hands. As far as the
eye could reach roads were being improved, others made; the buried
railways were being excavated, metals straightened, or replaced if too
far bent; shell-proof dug-outs were having their finishing touches, some
to be used as dressing-stations for the wounded whom to-morrow might
bring in, others for storing ammunition. In a nearby wood, where trees
had been reduced to little more than gaunt trunks barren of leaf and
twig, observation posts were built with many tons of branches hauled
from the rear, and so artfully wired in place that the stricken giants
seemed almost ready to live again. This work in itself constituted
reason enough for the Allied airmen to sweep the sky of German
observers, since only by "putting out the enemy's eye" could such
secrets of camouflage be preserved. Wells were being bored by gas engine
power and pipes laid, as spider webs, to bring untainted water to man
and beast. Then, of course, shallow trenches had to be dug for
telephone wires which otherwise would perish in the first onslaught of
artillery fire.
Among the trenches of greater magnitude, recently pounded to the point
of obliteration, activities were being pressed at highest tension, for
here the destruction had been particularly severe. The Germans had held
them well, but no human agency could have prevailed against the
unfaltering valor of the Allies. Now they were in Allied hands, and
being prepared for Allied shelter. From sunken approaches to the
assembly trenches, and from there forward through an intricate maze of
communicating passages to the firing trench, tens of thousands of men
were busy with pick and shovel--not, however, constructing the narrow,
steep-sided affairs which proved so disastrous to the Germans on the
Somme, but a shallower type of trench having more flare and a wider
sole. Just behind them worked the plumbers and pipemen, the carpenters
and timber placers, the electricians with their coils of wire and
telephones; everything perfected with the greatest nicety today, which
tomorrow--or the next, or next, tomorrow--would be buried for future
plowshares. War could not be war unless it were the highest expression
of construction and destruction, even as it raises life and death to the
highest power of sublimity!
Boring like huge worms from the front line outward, were tunnellers,
biting into the earth with grim persistence to lay mines beneath the
enemy; not that this work would be finished in time for tomorrow's
action, wherein plans were already completed to press forward, but
should the German positions prove firm enough to establish another
temporary deadlock, then they would serve a purpose. By such forethought
are battles won, when nothing is underestimated, nothing overlooked, no
shade of opportunity neglected, and all chances accounted for.
"I never dreamed it was so gigantic a game as this," Jeb gasped.
"But there is much more, Monsieur," his companion smiled.
"Does no one ever rest?" Jeb asked, in a voice of awe.
"Oh, yes, Monsieur," the _poilu_ smiled again. "In places where the
trenches have been cleared and mended, where telephone wires have been
connected to instruments, where water pipes have been brought down and
fauceted, flooring built across mucky places, gas gongs installed,
ammunition, grenades and tinned food stored in the newly finished
shell-proof chambers, you will find a few over-exhausted men sprawled
out, sleeping."
While Jeb could see nothing of this, the driver promised to get him into
it soon enough--a suggestion that turned him away in search of other
scenes and thoughts. Off to the right two lines of snags marked what had
once been graceful poplars edging a famous _route national_, but
now----! He glanced quickly backward along the direction from which he
came. Here, at first, a brighter prospect met his eyes: the far-off
rolling slopes were green, the far-off woods had not been stripped of
leaves; but never could the grim story be quite wiped out for, across
this verdant scene, as a long, thin reptile with a million legs, crawled
an endless line of artillery and munition trains.
"Can't I ever get away from it!" he cried to himself, shutting his eyes
in agony.
The horses had been rested and word came to proceed; the limbers creaked
and moved. Jeb gripped the seat in terror, feeling now that before they
got half way down the slope a German gunner would pick them out and
touch the magic spring which reduces men--not symbolically but
literally--to dust. Yet he breathed more freely and sent another prayer
up for the engineers when almost at once they entered a sunken road,
converging toward the enemy although keeping well out of sight. At
places where the terrain did not admit of this shelter, or other roads
went off at tangents, long strips of canvas were stretched across the
openings, their outer sides being painted, in theatre scenery fashion,
to represent the surrounding ground. If the Germans had only known that
thousands of troops and thousands of tons of ammunition passed daily
within easy range of their guns, protected by a wall of 10-ounce canvas!
Another important reason for sweeping their planes from the sky!
The _poilu_ called Jeb's attention to these ingenious devices of
camouflage, seeming to think them a great joke.
"But for the good God having made the Boche, Monsieur, I should call
them asses with long ears for never estimating our _finesse_ and
resource."
"It wouldn't be disrespectful, Frenchie," one of the unit laughed,
"because the good God made asses, too!"
"Well, Monsieur, I feel there should be an apology somewhere! Perhaps it
is to the four-footed asses."
They climbed down at last and, each loaded with supplies, tramped
through half a mile of communicating trenches to the protected
dressing-stable dug-outs--roomy affairs, twenty feet below the surface
and opening rearward into a kind of quadrangle. Five hundred yards ahead
were the firing trenches, where things would happen; and the _poilu_,
observing this, grimly remarked:
"_Sacre bleu!_ They certainly have ordered you up to the very front,
Monsieur! 'Tis not often the women are brought so close--but it means,
Monsieur, that our Generals are positive of driving the Boche far back
tomorrow!"
The chief surgeon in charge here rushed to meet them with open arms,
embracing Dr. Barrow warmly; and then Barrow stepped back to look at
him, for this was the great Bonsecours! Georges Bonsecours! He saw a man
of medium height, and of medium build, slightly gray about his temples,
and in the neighborhood of forty years of age. No one of these things
was particularly distinguishing, but when he spoke--ah, then the
impelling magnetism which drew others close to him, the force which sent
them flying off to various duties, was easily explained. His eyes, while
twinkling merrily as though everything in life possessed a touch of
humor, also gave the impression that they could see beneath five layers
of skin tissue--that by some canny second sight they could detect a
piece of shrapnel without the aid of probes or X-ray; but a closer
inspection showed that they were set in a face which had become seamed
by weariness. His arms, also, hung with a directness that indicated
great fatigue.
While supplies were being stored away and the women nurses had retired
for a needed rest, the world-famed surgeon escorted Dr. Barrow farther
down the line of dressing-stations, particularly to see his own unit
which had been in this sector since the middle of April.
"Monsieur le Doctor," he said,--then continued in beautiful English--"I
am greatly impressed with the fortitude of your American women who have
assisted me. There is one--but why mention one, when they all typify to
my mind graceful columns of ivory; pure in their strength and certainty,
crystal in their thoughts and deeds! My operating table is a Grecian
temple, Monsieur, when they surround it."
"That is a beautiful tribute," said Barrow, flushing with pride.
"Not as beautiful, Monsieur, as the inspiration and assistance which one
of them has given me." He stopped, blushing like a girl, then continued
frankly with an infectious smile: "We learn to be outspoken on the edge
of No Man's Land--perhaps it is because we never know at what moment our
lips may be completely sealed that we appreciate the value of saying
fearlessly what is in our minds; therefore I will finish by telling you
that, next to an Allied victory, my greatest hope is that she may be
persuaded to share my fortune in Paris, after we are finished with the
fortunes of war!"
"I could wish no girl better luck than that," Barrow smiled. "To us at
home you stand as a kind of demi-god, a wizard, who----"
"Ah, Monsieur, I have accomplished nothing, really, until I came here,
where her sympathy and bravery have made me see new things! I tell her
that she inherits these traits from an angel mother and an American
Indian father."
Both men laughed delightedly; Dr. Barrow little dreaming at the moment
that this American girl, beloved by every one around her, was the
daughter of an old friend who edited a paper down--or was it up?--in
Hillsdale.
"You see that we are close to things here," Bonsecours continued, as
they walked along.
"I had wondered about the women being so near the front," Barrow
replied.
"Well, Monsieur, in some sectors this position is safer for them than
farther back--only, of course, when our artillery and line is as strong
as here, and the dressing-stations as well protected. Besides," he
added softly, "we are needing many nurses, and have lost fearfully in
men and orderlies."
The sun set clear that evening, putting a sparkle in the air which
touched one's nerves like wine. Shortly before twilight Jeb was drawn to
the entrance of his dug-out by the tramping and sloshing of many feet.
He walked the length of the quadrangle to where it joined a
communicating trench and for half an hour--even after the night had
grown too dark to see distinctly--watched an incessant line of soldiery
moving forward to positions. Tramp, tramp, they went, under orders of
silence, because something big was on the boards for tomorrow. But 'twas
not the quiet of glumness that enveloped them, for they showed in every
step an elasticity of spirits, as of muscles. He might have called it a
fluid line, so lithely did it flow by; he might have called it a line of
gods, so proudly did each man hold his steel-capped head!
The firing trench lay about six hundred yards from the German first
line; six hundred yards of No Man's Land waiting passively for the
shambles! Jeb wrung his hands and leaned against the earthen wall. With
that stark struggle for existence but a few hours off, how was it
possible for men to step out happily! What would he be doing, were he
amongst them!
The line was still passing, coming out of the impenetrable and
marching--who knew where! when he stumbled through the dark entrance of
the dug-out.
"What's going on out there?" a comrade asked.
"Ghosts," he answered, feeling for his bunk and throwing himself face
down on it.
He was tired to exhaustion, his nerves were starved for rest. The
dug-out was chilly after sundown and he reached fumblingly for his
blanket, found himself lying upon it and awkwardly wriggled under.
The warmth was good. In a little while the steady tramp of men going to
kill or die--for 'tis thus the gods play with us!--became a soothing
lullaby, and lured him into sleep.