an officer who has had much experience with the real thing and who
explains to his pupils, whose knowledge of craters has been gained
from the pictures in the illustrated weeklies, how to capture,
fortify, and hold such a position. In order to give the men confidence
when the order "Put on gas-masks!" is passed down the line, they are
sent into a real dugout filled with real gas and the entrances closed
behind them. As soon as they find that the masks are a sure
protection, their nervousness disappears. In order to accustom them
to lachrymal shells, they are marched, this time without masks,
through an underground chamber which reeks with the tear-producing
gas--and they are a very weepy, red-eyed lot of men who emerge. They
are instructed in trench-digging, in the construction of wire
entanglements, "knife-rests," chevaux-de-frise, and every other form
of obstruction, in revetting, in the making of fascines and gabions,
in sapping and mining, in the most approved methods of dugout
construction, in trench sanitation, in the location of listening-posts
and how to conceal them; they are shown how to cut wire, they are
drilled in trench raiding and in the most effective methods of "trench
cleaning." The practical work is supplemented by lectures on
innumerable subjects. As it is extremely difficult for an officer to
make his explanations heard by a battalion of men assembled in the
open, a series of small amphitheatres have been excavated from the
sand-dunes, the tiers of seats being built up of petrol tins filled
with sand. In one of these improvised amphitheatres I saw an officer
illustrating the proper method of using the gas-mask to a class of 600
men.
On these imitation battle-fields, any one of which is larger than the
field of Waterloo, the men are instructed in the gentle art of
bombing, first with "dubs," which do not explode at all, then with
toy-grenades which go off harmlessly with a noise like a small
firecracker, and finally, when they have become sufficiently expert,
with the real Mills bomb, which scatters destruction in a burst of
noise and flame. To attain accuracy and distance in throwing these
destructive little ovals is by no means as easy as it sounds. The
bombing-school at Etaples will not soon forget the American baseball
player who threw a bomb seventy yards. The hand-grenade is the
unsafest and most treacherous of all weapons and even in practice
accidents and near-accidents frequently occur. The Mills bomb, which
has a scored surface to prevent slipping, is about the shape and size
of a large lemon. Protruding from one end is the small metal ring of
the firing-pin. Three seconds after this is pulled out the bomb
explodes--and the farther the thrower can remove himself from the bomb
in that time the better. Now, in line with the policy of strict
economy which has been adopted by the British military authorities,
the men receiving instruction at the bombing-schools were told not to
throw away the firing-pins, but to put them in their pockets, to be
turned in and used over again. The day after this order went into
effect a company of newly arrived recruits were being put through
their bomb-throwing tests. Man after man walked up to the protecting
earthwork, jerked loose the firing-pin, hurled the bomb, and put the
firing-pin in his pocket. At last it came the turn of a youngster who
was obviously overcome with stage fright. To the horror of his
comrades, he threw the firing-pin and put the live bomb in his pocket!
In three seconds that bomb was due to explode, but the instructor,
who had seen what had happened, made a flying leap to the befuddled
man, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out the bomb, and hurled
it. It exploded in the air.
Near Etaples, at Paris Plage, is the largest of the British
machine-gun schools. Here the men are taught the operation not only of
all the models of machine-guns used by the Allies, but they are also
shown how to handle any which they may capture from the Germans. Set
up on the beach were a dozen different models, beginning with a
wonderfully ingenious weapon, as beautifully constructed as a watch,
which had just been brought in from a captured German airplane and of
which the British officers were loud in their admiration, and ending
with the little twenty-five-pound gun invented by Colonel Lewis, an
American. Standing on the sands, a few hundred yards away, were half a
dozen targets of the size and outline of German soldiers. "Try 'em
out," suggested the officer in command of the school. So I seated
myself behind the German gun, looked into a ground-glass finder like
that on a newspaper photographer's camera, swung the barrel of the
weapon until the intersection of the scarlet cross-hairs covered the
mirrored reflection of the distant figures, and pressed together a
pair of handles. There was a noise such as a small boy makes when he
draws a stick along the palings of a picket fence, a series of
flame-jets leaped from the muzzle of the gun, and the targets
disappeared. "You'd have broken up that charge," commented the officer
approvingly. "Try the others." So I tried them all--Maxim, Hotchkiss,
Colt, St. Etienne, Lewis--in turn.
"Which do you consider the best gun?" I asked.
"That one," and he pointed to Colonel Lewis's invention. "It is the
lightest, simplest, strongest, and most effective machine-gun made. It
weighs only twenty-five and a half pounds and a clip of forty-seven
rounds can be fired in four seconds. At present we have four to each
company--though the number will probably be increased shortly--and
they are so easy to handle that in an attack they go over with the
second wave."
"But our Ordnance Department claims that they cannot fire two thousand
rounds without heating and jamming," I remarked.
"Who ever heard of a machine-gun being called upon to fire two
thousand rounds under actual service conditions?" he asked scornfully.
"On the front we rarely exceed two hundred or three hundred rounds;
five hundred never. Long before that number can be fired the attack is
broken up or the gun is captured."
"In any event," said I, "the American War Department, to whom Colonel
Lewis offered his patents, asserts that the gun did not make good on
the proving-grounds of Flanders."
"Well," was the dry response, "it has made good on the proving-grounds
of Flanders."
The pretty little casino at Paris Plage, where, in the days before the
war, the members of the summer colony used to dance or play at _petits
chevaux_, has been converted into a lecture-hall for machine-gunners.
Covering the walls are charts and cleverly painted pictures which
illustrate at a glance the important rôles played by machine-guns in
certain actions. They reminded me of those charts which they use in
Sunday-schools to explain the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt or
their wanderings in the Wilderness. Seated on the wooden benches,
which have been brought in from a school near by, are a score or more
of sun-reddened young Englishmen in khaki.
"Here," says the alert young officer who is acting as instructor,
unrolling a chart, "is a picture of an action in a little village
south of Mons. A company of our fellows were holding the village.
There are, you see, only two roads by which the Germans could advance,
so the captain who was in command placed machine-guns so as to command
each of them. About five o'clock in the morning the Germans appeared
on this lower road. Now, the sergeant in charge of that machine-gun,
instead of taking cover behind this hedge with this brook in front of
him, had concealed his gun in this clump of trees, which, as you see,
are out in the middle of a field. No sooner had he opened upon the
Boches, therefore, than a detachment of Uhlans galloped around and cut
him off from the town. Then it was all over but the shouting. The
Germans got into the town and our fellows got it in the neck. And all
because that fool sergeant didn't use common sense in choosing a
position for his gun. They marked his grave with a nice little white
cross. And that's what you boys will get if you don't profit by these
things I'm telling you."
There you have an example of the thorough preparation which is
necessary to wage modern war successfully. It is not merely a matter
of a man being taught how to operate a machine-gun; if he is to be of
the greatest value he must be taught how to place that gun where it is
going to do the maximum damage to the enemy. And, by means of the
graphic Sunday-school charts, and the still more graphic sentences of
the officer-teacher, those lessons are so driven home that the men
will never forget them.
Virtually everything between England and the fighting front is under
the control of the L. C.--Lines of Communication. This vast
organization, one of the most wide-spread and complex in the world,
represents six per cent of all the British forces in France. Of the
countless forms of activity which it comprises, the railways are by
far the most important. Did you know that the British have laid and
are operating more than a thousand miles of new railway in France? As
the existing railways were wholly inadequate for the transportation of
the millions of fighting men, with the stupendous quantities of food
and equipment, new networks of steel had to be laid, single tracks had
to be converted into double ones, mammoth railway-yards, sidings, and
freight-houses had to be built, thousands of locomotives, carriages,
and trucks provided. This work was done by the Railway Companies of
the Royal Engineers, behind which was the Railway Reserve, whose
members, before the war, were employed by the great English railway
systems. Wearing the blue-and-white brassard of the L. C. are whole
battalions of engineers and firemen, bridge-builders, signal-men,
freight handlers, clerks, and navvies, all of them experts at their
particular jobs. It is impossible to overrate the services which these
railway men have performed. They build and staff the new lines which
are constantly being constructed; they repair destroyed sections of
track, restore blown-up bridges; in short, keep in order the arteries
through which courses the life-blood of the army. They are the real
organizers of victory. Without them the men in the trenches could not
fight a day. You cannot travel for a mile along the British front
without seeing an example of their rapid track-laying. They have had
to forget all the old-fashioned British notions about track
permanency, however, for their business is to get the trains over the
rails with the least possible delay; nothing else matters. Engaged in
this work are men who have learned the lessons of rough-and-ready
construction on the Mexican Central, on the Egyptian State Railways,
on the Beira and Mashonaland, and on the Canadian Pacific, and the
rate at which they cause the twin lines of steel to grow before one's
eyes would have aroused the admiration of such railroad pioneers as
Stanford and Hill and Harriman.
The engines for use on these military railways are sent across the
Channel with fires already built and banked, water in the boilers, and
coal in the tenders. They come in ships specially constructed so that
the whole top deck can be lifted off. Giant cranes reach down into the
hold and pick the engines up and set them down on the tracks on the
quays, the crews climb aboard and shake down the fires, a
harassed-looking man, known as the M. L. O. (Military Landing Officer)
turns them over to the Railway Transport Officer, who is a very
important personage indeed, and he in turn hands the engineers their
orders, and, half an hour after they have been landed on the soil of
France, the engines go puffing off to take their places in the war
machine.
It is not the numbers of men to be transported to the front, nor even
the astounding quantities of supplies required to feed those men,
which have been the primary cause for crisscrossing all Northern
France with this latticework of steel. It is the unappeasable appetite
of the guns. "This is a cannon war," Field-Marshal von Mackensen told
an interviewer. "The side that burns up the most ammunition is bound
to gain ground." And on that assumption the British are proceeding.
England's response to the insistent cry of "Shells, shells, shells!"
has been one of the wonders of the war. By January 1, 1917, the shell
increase for howitzers was twenty-seven times greater than in 1914-15;
in mid-caliber shells the increase was thirty-four times; and in all
the "heavies" ninety-four times. And the shell output keeps a-growing
and a-growing. Yet what avail the four thousand flaming forges which
have made all this possible, what avails the British sea-power which
has landed these amazing quantities of shells in France, and 2,000,000
of men along with them, if the shells cannot be delivered to the guns?
And that is where the great new systems of railway have come in.
"Be lavish with your ammunition," Napoleon urged upon his battery
commanders. "Fire incessantly." And it is that maxim which the
artillerists of all the nations at war are following to-day. The
expenditure of shells staggers the imagination. In a single day, near
Arras, the French let loose upon the German lines $1,625,000 worth of
projectiles, or almost as great a quantity as Germany used in the
entire war of 1870-71. Five million shells of all calibers were fired
by the British gunners during the first four weeks of the offensive on
the Somme. In one week's attack north of Verdun the Germans fired
2,400,000 field-gun shells and 600,000 larger ones. To transport this
mountain of potential destruction required 240 trains, each carrying
200 tons of projectiles.
During the "Big Push" on the Somme, there were frequently eighty guns
on a front of two hundred yards. The batteries would fire a round per
gun per minute for days on end, the gunners working in shifts, two
hours on and two hours off. So thickly did the shells fall upon the
German lines that the British observing officers were frequently
unable to spot their own bursts. A field-battery of eighteen-pounders
firing at this rate will blaze away anywhere from twelve to twenty
tons of ammunition a day. As guns firing with such rapidity wear out
their tubes and their springs in a few days, it is necessary to rush
entire batteries to the repair-shops at the rear. And that provides
another burden for the railways.
In addition to the railways of standard gauge, the British have laid
down an astonishing trackage of narrow-gauge, Décauville, and
monorail systems. These portable and easily laid field railways twist
and turn and coil like snakes among the gun positions, the miniature
engines, with their strings of toy cars, puffing their way into the
heart of the artillery zone, where the ammunition is unloaded, sorted,
and classified in calibers, and then artfully hidden from the prying
eyes of enemy aviators and from their bombs. These great collections
of gun-food the English inelegantly term "ammunition dumps." Nor do
the trains that come up loaded go back empty, for upon the miniature
trucks are loaded the combings of the battle-field to be shipped back
to the "economy shops" in the rear. Where possible, wounded men are
sent back to the hospitals in like fashion, some of the railways
having trucks specially constructed for this purpose. Where the light
railways stop the monorail systems begin, food, cartridges, and mail
being sent right up into the forward trenches in small cars or baskets
suspended from a single overhead rail and pushed by hand. They look
not unlike the old-fashioned cash-and-parcel carriers which were used
in American department stores before the present system of pneumatic
tubes came in.
Comprising another branch of the L. C.'s multifarious activities are
the field telephones, whose lines of black-and-white poles run out
across the landscape in every direction. And it is no haphazard and
hastily improvised system either, but as good in every respect as you
will find in American cities. It has to be good. Too much depends upon
it. An indistinct message might cost a thousand lives; a break-down in
the system might mean a great military disaster. Every officer of
importance in the British zone has a telephone at hand, and as the
armies advance the telephones go with them, the wires and portable
instruments being transported by the motor-cycle despatch riders of
the Army Signal Corps, so that frequently within thirty minutes after
a battalion has captured a German position its commander will be in
telephonic communication with Advanced G. H. Q. The speed with which
the connections are made would be remarkable even in New York. I have
seen an officer at General Headquarters establish communication with
the Provost Marshal's office in Paris in three minutes, and with the
War Office in London in ten.
I might mention in passing that nowadays the General Headquarters of
an army (G. H. Q. it is always called on the British front, Grand
Quartier-Général on the French, and Comando Supremo on the Italian) is
usually eight, ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty-five miles behind the
firing-line. Most of the commanding generals have, however, advanced
headquarters, considerably nearer the front, where they usually remain
during important actions. It is said that at Waterloo Napoleon and
Wellington watched each other through their telescopes. Compare this
with the battle for Verdun, where the headquarters of the Crown Prince
must have been at least thirty miles from those of General Nivelle at
Souilly.
If one of the greatest triumphs of the war is the creation of the
transport system, another is the maintenance, often under heavy
shell-fire, of the highways on which that transport moves. No one can
imagine what the traffic from the Channel up to the British front is
like; one must see it to believe it. The roads are as crowded with
traffic as is Fifth Avenue on a sunny afternoon. Every fifty yards or
so are military police, mounted and afoot, who control the traffic
with small red flags as do the New York bluecoats with their
stop-and-go signs. So incredibly dense was the volume of traffic
during the Somme offensive that it is little exaggeration to say that
an active man could have started immediately back of the British front
and could have made his way to Albert, twenty miles distant, if not,
indeed, to the English Channel, by jumping from lorry to wagon, from
wagon to ambulance, from ambulance to motor-bus. In going from Albert
up to the front I passed hundreds, yes, thousands of lumbering
motor-lorries bearing every kind of supply from barbed wire to
marmalade. In order to avoid confusion, the lorries belonging to the
ammunition-train have painted on their sides a shell, while those
comprising the supply column are designated by a four-leaf clover. A
whole series of other distinctive emblems, such as stars, crescents,
pyramids, Maltese crosses, unicorns, make it possible to tell at a
glance to what division or unit a vehicle belongs. I passed six-mule
teams from Missouri and Mississippi hauling wagons made in South Bend,
Indiana, which were piled high with sides of Australian beef and
loaves of French-made bread. Converted motor-buses, which had once
borne the signs Bank-Holborn-Marble Arch, rumbled past with their
loads of boisterous men in khaki bound for the trenches or bringing
back other loads of tired men clad apparently in nothing save mud.
Endless strings of ambulances went rocking and rolling by and some of
them were dripping crimson. Tractors, big as elephants, panted and
grunted on their way, hauling long trains of wagons laden with tins
of cocoa or condensed milk, with kegs of nails, with lumber, with
fodder. Occasionally a gray staff-car like our own threaded its
tortuous and halting way through the terrific press of traffic. We
passed one that had broken down. The two officers who were its
occupants were seated on the muddy bank beside the road smoking
cigarettes while the driver was endeavoring to get his motor started
again. One of them, on the shoulder-straps of whose "British warm"
were the stars of a captain, was a slender, fair-haired, rather
delicate-looking youngster in the early twenties. It was the Prince of
Wales, but, so far as receiving any attention from the hurrying throng
was concerned, he might as well have been an unknown subaltern. For it
is an extremely democratic army, and royalty receives from it scant
consideration; Lloyd George is of far more importance than King George
to the man in khaki.
Almost since the beginning of the war this particular stretch of road
on which I was travelling had been shelled persistently, as was shown
by the splintered tree-stumps which lined the road and the
shell-craters which pitted the fields on either side. To keep this
road passable under such wear and tear as it had been subjected to for
many months would have been a remarkable accomplishment under any
circumstances; to keep it open under heavy shell-fire is a performance
for which the labor battalions deserve the highest praise. Wearing
their steel helmets, the road-making gangs have kept at work, night
and day, along its entire length, exposed to much of the danger of the
men in the trenches, and having none of their protection. There has
been no time to obtain ordinary road metal, so they have filled up the
holes with bricks taken from the ruined villages which dot the
landscape, rolling them level when they get the chance. For nothing
must be permitted to interfere with that flow of traffic; on it
depends the food for the men and for the guns. An hour's blockade on
that road would prove infinitely more serious than would a freight
wreck which blocked all four tracks of the New York Central. No wonder
that Lord Derby, in addressing his Pioneer Battalions in Lancashire,
remarked: "In this war the pick and the shovel are as important as the
rifle."
While I was standing on the summit of a little eminence beyond
Fricourt, looking down on that amazing scene of industry, a big German
shell burst squarely on the road. It wrecked a motor-lorry, it killed
several horses and half a dozen men, but, most serious of all, it blew
in the road a hole as large as a cottage cellar. The river of traffic
may have halted for two or three minutes, certainly not more. In
scarcely more time than it takes to tell it, the nearest military
police were on the spot. The stream of vehicles bound for the front
was swung out into the fields at the right, the stream headed for the
rear was diverted into the fields at the left. Within five minutes a
hundred men were at work with pick and shovel filling up the hole
with material piled at frequent intervals along the road for just that
purpose. Within twenty minutes a steam-roller had arrived--goodness
knows where it had materialized from!--and was at work rolling the
road into hardness. Within thirty minutes after the shell burst the
hole which it made no longer existed and the lorries, the tractors,
the wagons, the guns, the buses, the ambulances were rolling on their
way. Then they bore away the six tarpaulin-covered forms beside the
road and buried them.