the hour before the dawn, and the cold, grey mist hangs over all, robing
the jagged ruins and harmonizing the rough outlines into something more
human, while accentuating the stare of the vacant window-openings. There
is the first crescent of the moon in the sky. Two companies of artillery
have just passed along the road. The guns and caissons creak and rumble,
and the men, preserving a sleepy silence, bend forward on their horses,
their heavy sabres smacking against the horses’ sides, and their blue
uniforms melting into the mist.
The officer halts to water his horse, and we chat for a minute. The
_contre-avions_ are after a raider headed for Bar-le-Duc, and I put out
my lantern. We smile as the shrapnel bursts more than a mile from the
machine. The officer speaks a few words of praise about his men, then
vaults on his horse. We exchange “_bonne chance_” and he canters off
down the road, disappearing in the blue-grey mist.
* * * * *
A RUMOR creeps into camp that the next attack will be at V——. More
rumors follow, supported by the increased traffic. We are on the main
road to V——, and are keenly critical. We take out our maps and examine
the outline of the front in the sector just as if we knew something
about it. Would-be strategists hold forth in heated arguments, and many
bitter debates follow. Those of us who have the early watch just at
daybreak notice many companies of _soixante-quinzes_ rumbling by each
morning, and observe that they take the left fork of the road. This is
important, for the left road leads towards M——, which is really not in
our sector. More argument follows, and ears are constantly strained to
catch the first augmentation of the distant thunder of the guns, and to
determine from which end of the sector it comes.
Now all the officers admit that an attack is to ensue shortly, but they
do not know when. We tune up our cars and get our baggage ready, as we
may be called. The lieutenant receives some orders and warns us to be
ready to move on a moment’s notice.
The traffic is incessant now. _Camions_ with shells, barbed wire,
_camouflage_ cloth, _torpilles_, and more shells rush by. Convoys pass
filled with troops, cheering wildly, thirty-five hundred or more in an
evening. The thunder is gradually intensified, and the sky flashes
faintly in the distance like heat lightning. From a hilltop artillery
rockets and star-shells can be seen in the far horizon. More troops keep
going up, and the guns pound the line with unabated fury.
It is evening, and we are formed in a circle listening to some story.
The lieutenant walks up to us:
“We move at seven in the morning,” he says laconically, and steps off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
AT THE FRONT
THIS time we have a different run. It is from Montzéville to Hill 239,
and the wounded are brought in through the communication trench which
leads to Mort Homme—the well-named Dead Man’s Hill. The road was once
lined for a distance of perhaps a mile with towering poplars, evinced by
the size of the stumps, but now not one of them is left higher than
three or four feet. The road runs the entire distance across open
meadows, and as what _camouflage_ there was has been shot away by the
Boche in his search for two 220 batteries, which have long since moved
on, the enemy _saucisses_ can regulate the traffic quite simply. The
place has been shot up so much recently that there has been no time to
repair the roads fully, and now there are long stretches temporarily
patched with rough, broken stone, which makes bad going. Riding forward,
one sees large German shells breaking on the road ahead like sudden
black clouds, which disappear slowly and convey to the mind
uncomfortable premonitions.
Mort Homme comes suddenly and bleakly into view about two kilometres on
our left,—a hill, not exceedingly high, commanding a great plain, it is
imposing only in the memory of the rivers of blood that have flowed down
its sides. Once—and looking at it one can scarcely believe it—this was
covered with trees and vegetation like many another less famous hill.
Now it is reduced to a mere sandpile, pitted with the scars of a million
shells. After standing the continuous bombardment of both combatants for
over a year, there is left not a stick of vegetation, nor an inch of
ground that has not been turned over by shells many times. Crowned by
the pink of the sunset, it stands there on the plain a great monument to
the glorious death of thousands.
The French lost many thousands of lives in their attempts to capture
Mort Homme, and were very bitter, consequently, against its defenders.
There was a large tunnel running through the hill, and when three sides
had been captured and both ends of the tunnel were held, it was
discovered that they had trapped there three thousand Germans. I talked
with a man who walked through the tunnel the day after the massacre and
he told me that it was literally inches deep in blood.
Arrived at the _poste_, which is nothing more than a hole in the ground,
we stand around while the _brancardiers_ load the car and exchange lies
with any one who happens to be there. The Boche sends a dozen or more
shells whining over our heads to break on the road or beside it, and
near enough for every one to gravitate slowly towards the _abri_ in
preparation for a wild dive should the next shell fall much nearer. One
man asked me why they put stairs leading into an _abri_, as nobody ever
thought of using them. When I asked him how else one would get out, he
said he had never thought of that.
There is nothing quite so uncomfortable to hear as the near whistle of a
shell. The more one hears the sound the more it affects him. There is
something in the sharp whine which seems to create despair and induce
subconscious melancholy. There is a feeling of helplessness and
powerlessness that is most depressing. The thunder of the guns or the
crash of the bursting shells cannot be compared with the sound of this
approaching menace. It is as if some demon from the depths of Hades were
hurtling towards you, its weird laughter crying out, calling to you and
chilling your blood. For the second of its passage a hush falls on the
conversation, and the best jokes die in dry throats. But it is only for
that second, and instantly laughter rings out again at some jest.
Speculations or comments are made on the probable or observed place
where it exploded, and all is the same except for that subconscious
tenseness which, for the most part unrealized, grips every man while he
goes about his work here.
The first ordeal by fire is the easiest. It is then but a new and
interesting sensation and experience. Later, after one has seen the
effect and had some close calls, it is more of a nervous strain. The
whine of a shell is very high-pitched, and after a time the sound wears
distinctly on the nerves. It is a curious fact that, in spite of the
philosophy developed, the longer a man has been under shell-fire the
harder it is for him to stand it. By no means would he think of showing
it, but he would not deny the fact. It is only the philosophy and
callousness developed which keep the men from breaking down, and in many
cases the strain on the nerves becomes so great that men do collapse
under it. This is one of the forms of so-called “shell-shock.”
The car loaded with _blessés_, we start back, driving more slowly this
time, as precious lives are in our care and jolts must be avoided
wherever possible. We find the road still more “out of repair” than when
we went over it before, with a number of new shell-holes varying from
two to ten feet in diameter, and much wood, dirt, and torn _camouflage_
strewn about, and often a horse lying where it was hit, its blood
coloring the mud in the gutter.
Approaching the town of Montzéville one sees at first a
wood—_ci-devant_—now a few blackened tree-trunks of spectre-like
appearance against the grey of the evening sky. Behind these appears the
town, a mass of jagged ruins, at that distance seeming to be absolutely
deserted. In fact it is, except for the dozen odd men who live in two or
three scattered _abris_ for some obscure purpose. An air of desolation
and despair broods over the place, and God knows it has seen enough to
haunt it.
From Montzéville we ride on to Dombasle and Jouy, the hospital, and
after handing over our more or less helpless charges to the tender
mercies of the _brancardiers_, we return to the relay station at
Montzéville to wait for our next roll, and to wonder what possible good
those _poilus_ can be doing who sit all day so peacefully at the door of
the _abri_ opposite ours, sipping _Pinard_ and smoking their cigarettes.
* * * * *
THE soldiers at the front are always looking for the bright side of
life, and after a little one gets to see humor in many more things than
he would have believed possible at home. As an example, there seems to
be little humor connected with a funeral, yet one of the times I saw the
_poilus_ most amused was one day at P 4, our relay station, on such an
occasion.
There had been an intermittent bombardment, and we were sitting or
standing inside the _abri_ waiting for it to let up. The _abri_ was
located in the corner of a graveyard, and there was always the
unpleasant feeling that the next rain might wash a few bones in on us.
The _abri_ was small, very crowded, and, as it was several feet
underground, none too well ventilated. Every one spent long stretches
here, and brought his food with him. What was too poor to eat soon mixed
with the mud on the floor, lending an unsavory odor to the atmosphere.
Presently one of the Frenchmen went out to see if the bombardment had
stopped. This is discovered by the same method one ascertains whether or
not it is raining—if he gets wet the storm is not over. The bombardment
was not over, and we waited. At last it seemed to have let up, only an
occasional shell crashing into the woods across the road, and we went
out to stretch and get a breath of air.
The _poilus_ gathered our inquisitive friend from the surrounding
shrubbery and trees and put him into several empty sandbags which they
laid on a stretcher, carefully placing the head, which appeared to have
been solid enough to withstand the shock, at the upper end. Another man
carried a freshly-made pine-wood coffin. In high spirits, the assembled
soldiers formed a procession and marched into the graveyard, singing
alternately a funeral dirge and “Madelon,” the French “Tipperary.” This
graveyard, not being on the firing-line itself, was rather a formal
affair. The graves were laid out in neat rows, and each man had one all
to himself with a wooden cross and his name on it. Of course
occasionally the shells did a little mixing, but that was a jest of the
Fates which disturbed no one, least of all those who were mixed.
Arrived at the grave, the _poilus_ rolled in the fragments of our late
friend and covered them with dirt.
“_Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note._”
Then they came back, roaring with laughter and tossing the coffin in the
air. The hero had expected the coffin and they had fooled him. Now they
could use it again.
The usual method of burial on the French front, where there is little
time to attend to such matters, is to dig a ditch six feet wide, ten
feet deep, and twenty feet long approximately. As each man is killed,
time and circumstances permitting, he is divested of his coat and shoes,
and his pockets are emptied. He is then thrown into the ditch and
covered with a few shovelfuls of dirt. This system is all very well
until new divisions relieve those in the trenches, and start digging
ditches for their own men. As there are no marks to show the location of
the old ones, they sometimes uncover rather unpleasant sights.
The reputation we have gained at home of being cold-blooded and lacking
in the finer senses is undeserved. While one is in it he cannot permit
himself to realize or dwell on the horrors or they would overwhelm him
and drive him insane. What is more natural than for the reaction to turn
the matter into jest and joke, to permit it to glance from the surface
without inflicting a wound?—“_C’est la guerre._”
* * * * *
PLUNGED suddenly from the commonplaces of peace into the seething
cauldron of war, France has had to adjust herself. Every one without
exception has lost many who were dear to him and much that he had
considered essential. The homes and hopes of thousands have been
blasted. Destruction, following in the wake of the invaders, has laid
waste much of the land, in many cases irreparably.
Entering the war a man is possessed of the greatest seriousness. He
thinks of its causes, the results both immediate and future, and of the
effect of each on him. He is stunned by what he believes himself to be
bearing up under. Then, as he moves up into the zone, into service and
action, and sees how others are affected, how much suffering and
misfortune come to them, he merges his troubles with theirs, realizing
the pettiness and insignificance of his own in the _tout ensemble_. He
laughs, and from this laugh springs the philosophy,—“_C’est la guerre._”
If a fly falls in his soup, if his best friend is blown to bits before
him, if his home and village are destroyed, he calmly shrugs his
shoulders, and remarks, “_C’est la guerre._”
* * * * *
THE roads at the front are cared for by a class of unsung heroes, the
roadbuilders. Back of the lines German prisoners are often used for this
work, but it is a rule of warfare that prisoners must not be worked
under fire, and the Allies observe this as the other rules of civilized
warfare. The roads are the arteries of the front, and during an attack
the enemy does his best to cripple them. If he succeeds, the troops in
the trenches, cut off from food, ammunition, and other supplies, are at
his mercy. During one attack through which I worked, the Boche, whose
hobby is getting ranges down to the inch and applying them as all other
things in a definite system, put a 150 every ten yards down the more
important roads.
[Illustration: NORMAL TRAFFIC AT THE FRONT
INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE CO., INC.]
All work in the zone is done by three classes of workers, excluding the
necessary military operations carried on by the troops in action. First,
there are the German prisoners who do every kind of work out of the zone
of fire. Then there are the French prisoners in the army, who have
committed some military crime, from sneezing in ranks to shooting a
colonel. Instead of serving time in a guardhouse, these are put in the
front-line trenches and kept there unarmed to build up the parapet,
attend to the drains, stop Boche bullets, and perform other functions.
If, for instance, a French soldier sends a letter through the civil
instead of the military mails, where the censorship is more strict, he
receives a thirty days’ sentence. If these prisoners make a suspicious
move they are shot by their own men. Second timers are rare, but many
serve life sentences.
Then there is the third class, a regular branch of the army, a
subdivision of the engineers, termed _pionniers_. The engineers do the
nastiest work in the army, and the _pionniers_ do the nastiest work in
the engineers. It is their duty to see that the wire is properly cut
before a charge, that the parapet is in repair and does not lack
sandbags,—and it is in this class that the roadbuilders come.
All along the roads lie piles of broken stone, which are continually
replaced by loads from the rear. At intervals are placed _abris_ filled
with roadbuilders who watch until a shell hits the road in their sector.
Then, almost before the dirt settles, they rush out armed with shovels,
and pile this rough stone into the hole and rush back again to shelter,
to wait for the next shell, which is not long in coming. This rough
patching is consolidated later when the sector quiets down, but does
admirably for the time-being, as the mud and traffic push it rapidly
into shape.
Steam-rollers are then sent up to finish the work, but find themselves
_persona non grata_ when left over night in the middle of a narrow and
muddy road, with no lights showing. We _ambulanciers_ are not fond of
the species at any time, as they seem to have a great affinity for
six-inch shells. When disintegrated, any one of the numerous parts
blocks our way. We are perfectly content to have the task left to the
simple roadbuilder, who proves less of an obstruction after meeting a
one-fifty.
* * * * *
MANY undeveloped instincts lie dormant in the subconscious mind of man.
In this war, where man has turned back the pages of civilization to live
and act for a period of time as a glorified cave-dweller, a number of
these unknown faculties have been discovered and developed.
Many animals have the power of seeing in the dark, and all species can
sense an unknown danger. These senses have been denied to civilized man,
but the primitive life at the front has developed them and other
instincts in those who live there so that it seems as if man might again
become possessed of all his latent powers.
A man going along a road has a conviction that if he continues he will
be killed. He makes a wide detour to avoid the road, and a shell strikes
where he would have been. Then again, men have premonitions that they
will be killed in the next attack or battle. All this is coupled with
absolute fatalism. They feel either that they are going to be killed or
will live through everything, and whichever it is, they merely shrug
their shoulders, remark, “_C’est la guerre_,” and permit nothing to
alter their belief. Many say that the shell with their name on it has
not yet been made, or if it has—“Why worry? We cannot escape it.” I
carried one man, while doing evacuation work, who had served three years
without a scratch, and when _en repos_ had fallen from an apple tree and
broken his leg. He thought it a great joke.
The _ambulancier_ has developed two of these instincts to quite a
degree. The first is that he can always locate an _abri_, his or some
one else’s, and disappear in it with astounding rapidity. The second is
that he can keep the road with no lights. This has to be done almost
entirely by instinct on many nights, and we find it usually safer to
make a turn where the “inner voice” directs us rather than where we
remember it should be. It is not remarkable, of course, that an
occasional car falls into a ditch or a shell-hole, but astonishing
rather how seldom this happens. While our Fords never attained any great
speed in night driving, I rode once with a friend from another section
in a Fiat, when he drove in pitch darkness faster than fifty miles an
hour, taking every turn accurately and safely by instinct and luck.
* * * * *
THE mud plays havoc with calculations, and we long to set our foot once
again on dry land. All the water in France seems to have gone into mud.
Water has never been a popular beverage here, and now it is even less
so. One horrified _poilu_, who had observed me drinking a glass of
water, asked if it did not give me indigestion. At the front there is
good reason for this. With so many men buried in the ground and so many
animals uninterred on it, all the springs are contaminated, and the
germs of every disease lurk in the water.
The French army provides a light red wine to take its place. This wine
is little stronger than grape juice and is the _Pinard_ of the _poilus_.
The government also provides tobacco which, to quote one _ambulancier_,
cannot be smoked without a gas mask.
The water in the streams is little better, and a bath in one of them
gives more moral than physical satisfaction. One French artilleryman
told me with great glee of seeing from his observation post a company of
German soldiers marched down to a river for a bath. As soon as they were
in the water he signalled the range to his battery, and they put a
barrage between the bathers and their clothes.
* * * * *
VERDUN is more than a name now—it is a symbol. France’s glorious fight
here with her back to the wall has gone down in history as a golden
page. The foe thundered at the gates and the gates held,—held for months
while the fate of France hung in the balance, and then opening, the
hosts of France poured out and drove the foe back mile by mile, bitter
miles.
The city does not boast an unscarred building, but these wounds do not
bleed in vain. For every one here there shall be two across the frontier
when the day of reckoning comes. An awe-inspiring silence broods over
the littered streets. There are no civilians here now, but many
soldiers, and as one walks an occasional cheer greets him,—“_Vive
l’Amérique!_”
The enemy has been driven back so far by this time that not more than
half a dozen vengeful shells a day are directed towards the violated
cathedral, its subterranean vaults blown open and exposed, its walls
struck, its windows shattered, and its roof fallen. A walk through this
city, divided by the peaceful Meuse, would convince one, if nothing had
before, that this war is not in vain, and that no force should be
spared, no rest taken until the nation which has perpetrated these
million crimes be crushed, that it may never strike like this again.
* * * * *
A BATTLE is made up of a number of attacks, and a push consists of a
number of battles. Consequently, each attack is most important as it is
one of the single stones out of which the wall of the push is
constructed. The taking of A—— was a small attack in itself, but it was
a part of the foundation on which was built the great August push at
Verdun.
Our section rolled into a town about four miles from A—— three days
before the attack proper was scheduled to begin. We established our
headquarters there, and our relay station and _poste de secours_ in the
Hesse Forest, the latter just behind the third-line trenches.
In the Champagne push the year before the French had not had nearly
enough artillery support, and it had cost them many lives. It is
something one hears spoken of rarely. To avoid a repetition of this
disaster they had massed for this attack in one wood six thousand guns
varying in calibre from the famous 75’s to several batteries of 380’s,
mounted on a railroad a stone’s throw from our sleeping quarters.
However, as we had no time for sleep, it made little difference. The 75
is about a three-inch gun, and the 380, a sixteen approximately.
Starting in three days before the attack, these guns began firing as
steadily as they could without overheating. Very often in our front
_abri_ it was impossible to write because of the vibration. One day,
when we stopped in the woods to change a punctured tire, the car was
knocked off the jack by the shocks several times before we could remove
the tire, and at last we had to run in on the rim.
Finally, just before the men were to go over the top, the barrage was
set down in front of the trenches and the men climbed over the parapet,
and started walking towards the enemy. It is always possible to tell the
_tir de barrage_ by the sound of the guns. There is a certain regularity
which is lacking when each gun is firing at independent targets, and the
steady thunder gives one the feeling of a tremendous hammer smashing,
smashing, irresistibly, each blow falling true and hard, and following
one another with the regularity of the machines in a giant factory.
A perfect barrage is impenetrable, with the shells falling so near
together and with such short intervals of time between that nothing can
survive it. The only possibility is the inaccuracy of some one or more
guns which will put a number of shells out of the line and leave a break
or opening.
Before the attack the officers all have their watches carefully
synchronized, as a mistake of one minute may cost many lives. Walking
ahead of their men, keeping them the right distance behind the solid
wall of flame and steel, they wait until a certain minute when the
barrage is lifted a number of yards and then advance to that distance.
In the orders, the minute the barrage is to be lifted and the distance
are given out beforehand; for to advance the soldiers too quickly would
be to put them under fire from their own guns.
In this attack the first wave passed over the destroyed wire, and on
reaching the enemy’s front-line trenches could not distinguish them from
the rest of the ground, and found no living thing there. The second-line
trenches were little better, and they got their fighting at the
third-line trenches. So perfect had the preparation and execution of
this attack been that the Bois d’A—— was cleared of the enemy in
thirteen minutes from the time the French left their trenches.