THE IRON DIVISION
It was bitterly cold, and the dead officer's diary weighed on my
spirit. The two officers in the machine pored over the map; I sat
huddled in my corner. I had come a long distance to do the thing I was
doing. But my enthusiasm for it had died. I wished I had not heard the
diary.
"At dawn I take advantage of a few moments' respite to read over the
kind wishes which have come from home. What happiness!" And then he
died.
The car jolted on.
The soldier and the military chauffeur out in front were drenched. The
wind hurled the rain at them like bullets. We were getting close to
the front. There were shellholes now, great ruts into which the car
dropped and pulled out again with a jerk.
Then at last a huddle of dark houses and a sentry's challenge. The car
stopped and we got out. Again there were seas of mud, deeper even than
before. I had reached the headquarters of the Third Division of the
Belgian Army, commonly known as the Iron Division, so nicknamed for
its heroic work in this war.
The headquarters building was ironically called the "château." It had
been built by officers and men, of fresh boards and lined neatly
inside with newspapers. Some of them were illustrated French papers.
It had much the appearance of a Western shack during the early days of
the gold fever. On one of the walls was a war map of the Eastern
front, the line a cord fastened into place with flag pins. The last
time I had seen such a map of the Eastern front was in the Cabinet
Room at Washington.
A large stove in the centre of the room heated the building, which was
both light and warm. Some fifteen officers received us. I was the only
woman who had been so near the front, for out here there are no
nurses. One by one they were introduced and bowed. There were fifteen
hosts and extremely few guests!
Having had telephone notice of our arrival, they showed me how
carefully they had prepared for it. The long desk was in beautiful
order; floors gleamed snow white; the lamp chimneys were polished.
There were sandwiches and tea ready to be served.
In one room was the telephone exchange, which connected the
headquarters with every part of the line. In another, a long line of
American typewriters and mimeographing machines wrote out and copied
the orders which were regularly distributed to the front.
"Will you see our museum?" said a tall officer, who spoke beautiful
English. His mother was an Englishwoman. So I was taken into another
room and shown various relics of the battlefield--pieces of shells,
rifles and bullets.
"Early German shells," said the officer who spoke English, "were like
this. You see how finely they splintered. The later ones are not so
good; the material is inferior, and here is an aluminum nose which
shows how scarce copper is becoming in Germany to-day."
I have often thought of that visit to the "château," of the beautiful
courtesy of those Belgian officers, their hospitality, their eagerness
to make an American woman comfortable and at home. And I was to have
still further proof of their kindly feeling, for when toward daylight
I came back from the trenches they were still up, the lamps were still
burning brightly, the stove was red hot and cheerful, and they had
provided food for us against the chill of the winter dawn. Out through
the mud and into the machine again. And now we were very near the
trenches. The car went without lights and slowly. A foot off the
centre of the road would have made an end to the excursion.
We began to pass men, long lines of them standing in the drenching
rain to let us by. They crowded close against the car to avoid the
seas of mud. Sometimes they grumbled a little, but mostly they were
entirely silent. That is the thing that impressed me always about the
lines of soldiers I saw going to and from the trenches--their silence.
Even their feet made no noise. They loomed up like black shadows which
the night swallowed immediately.
The car stopped again. We had made another leg of the journey. And
this time our destination was a church. We were close behind the
trenches now and our movements were made with extreme caution. Captain
F---- piloted me through the mud.
"We will go quietly," he said. "Many of them are doubtless sleeping;
they are but just out of the trenches and very tired."
Now and then one encounters in this war a picture that cannot be
painted. Such a picture is that little church just behind the Belgian
lines at L----. There are no pews, of course, in Continental churches.
The chairs had been piled up in a corner near the altar, and on the
stone floor thus left vacant had been spread quantities of straw.
Lying on the straw and covered by their overcoats were perhaps two
hundred Belgian soldiers. They lay huddled close together for warmth;
the mud of the trenches still clung to them. The air was heavy with
the odour of damp straw.
The high vaulted room was a cave of darkness. The only lights were
small flat candles here and there, stuck in saucers or on haversacks
just above the straw. These low lights, so close to the floor, fell on
the weary faces of sleeping men, accentuating the shadows, bringing
pinched nostrils into relief, showing lines of utter fatigue and
exhaustion.
But the picture was not all sombre. Here were four men playing cards
under an image of Our Lady, which was just overhead. They were muffled
against the cold and speaking in whispers. In a far corner a soldier
sat alone, cross-legged, writing by the light of a candle. His letter
rested on a flat loaf of bread, which was his writing table. Another
soldier had taken a loaf of bread for his pillow and was comfortably
asleep on it.
Captain F---- led the way through the church. He stepped over the men
carefully. When they roused and looked up they would have risen to
salute, but he told them to lie still.
It was clear that the relationship between the Belgian officers and
their troops was most friendly. Not only in that little church at
midnight, but again and again I have seen the same thing. The officers
call their men their "little soldiers," and eye them with affection.
One boy insisted on rising and saluting. He was very young, and on his
chin was the straggly beard of his years. The Captain stooped, and
lifting a candle held it to his face.
"The handsomest beard in the Belgian Army!" he said, and the men round
chuckled.
And so it went, a word here, a nod there, an apology when we disturbed
one of the sleepers.
"They are but boys," said the Captain, and sighed. For each day there
were fewer of them who returned to the little church to sleep.
On the way back to the car, making our way by means of the Captain's
electric flash through the crowded graveyard, he turned to me.
"When you write of this, madame," he said, "you will please not
mention the location of this church. So far it has escaped--perhaps
because it is small. But the churches always suffer."
I regretted this. So many of the churches are old and have the
interest of extreme age, even when they are architecturally
insignificant. But I found these officers very fair, just as I had
found the King of the Belgians disinclined to condemn the entire
German Army for the brutalities of a part of it.
"There is no reason why churches should not be destroyed if they are
serving military purposes," one of them said. "When a church tower
shelters a gun, or is used for observations, it is quite legitimate
that it be subject to artillery fire. That is a necessity of war."
We moved cautiously. Behind the church was a tiny cluster of small
houses. The rain had ceased, but the electric flashlight showed great
pools of water, through which we were obliged to walk. The hamlet was
very silent--not a dog barked. There were no dogs.
I do not recall seeing any dogs at any time along the front, except at
La Panne. What has become of them? There were cats in the destroyed
towns, cats even in the trenches. But there were no dogs. It is not
because the people are not fond of dogs. Dunkirk was full of them when
I was there. The public square resounded with their quarrels and noisy
playing. They lay there in the sun and slept, and ambulances turned
aside in their headlong career to avoid running them down. But the
villages along the front were silent.
I once asked an officer what had become of the dogs.
"The soldiers eat them!" he said soberly.
I heard the real explanation later. The strongest dogs had been
commandeered for the army, and these brave dogs of Flanders, who have
always laboured, are now drawing _mitrailleuses_, as I saw them at
L----. The little dogs must be fed, and there is no food to spare. And
so the children, over whose heads passes unheeded the real
significance of this drama that is playing about them, have their own
small tragedies these days.
We got into the car again and it moved off. With every revolution of
the engine we were advancing toward that sinister line that borders No
Man's Land. We were very close. The road paralleled the trenches, and
shelling had begun again.
It was not close, and no shells dropped in our vicinity. But the low,
horizontal red streaks of the German guns were plainly visible.
With the cessation of the rain had begun again the throwing over the
Belgian trenches of the German magnesium flares, which the British
call starlights. The French call them _fusées_. Under any name I do
not like them. One moment one is advancing in a comfortable obscurity.
The next instant it is the Fourth of July, with a white rocket
bursting overhead. There is no noise, however. The thing is
miraculously beautiful, silent and horrible. I believe the light
floats on a sort of tiny parachute. For perhaps sixty seconds it hangs
low in the air, throwing all the flat landscape into clear relief.
I do not know if one may read print under these _fusées_. I never had
either the courage or the print for the experiment. But these eyes of
the night open and close silently all through the hours of darkness.
They hang over the trenches, reveal the movements of troops on the
roads behind, shine on ammunition trains and ambulances, on the
righteous and the unrighteous. All along the German lines these
_fusées_ go up steadily. I have seen a dozen in the air at once. Their
silence and the eternal vigilance which they reveal are most
impressive. On the quietest night, with only an occasional shot being
fired, the horizon is ringed with them.
And on the horizon they are beautiful. Overhead they are distinctly
unpleasant.
"They are very uncomfortable," I said to Captain F----. "The Germans
can see us plainly, can't they?"
"But that is what they are for," he explained. "All movements of
troops and ammunition trains to and from the trenches are made during
the night, so they watch us very carefully."
"How near are we to the trenches?" I asked.
"Very near, indeed."
"To the first line?"
For I had heard that there were other lines behind, and with the
cessation of the rain my courage was rising. Nothing less than the
first line was to satisfy me.
"To the first line," he said, and smiled.
The wind which had driven the rain in sheets against the car had blown
the storm away. The moon came out, a full moon. From the car I could
see here and there the gleam of the inundation. The road was
increasingly bad, with shell holes everywhere. Buildings loomed out of
the night, roofless and destroyed. The _fusées_ rose and burst
silently overhead; the entire horizon seemed encircled with them. We
were so close to the German lines that we could see an electric signal
sending its message of long and short flashes, could even see the
reply. It seemed to me most unmilitary.
"Any one who knew telegraphy and German could read that message," I
protested.
"It is not so simple as that. It is a cipher code, and is probably
changed daily."
Nevertheless, the officers in the car watched the signalling closely,
and turning, surveyed the country behind us. In so flat a region, with
trees and shrubbery cut down and houses razed, even a pocket flash can
send a signal to the lines of the enemy. And such signals are sent.
The German spy system is thorough and far-reaching.
I have gone through Flanders near the lines at various times at night.
It is a dead country apparently. There are destroyed houses, sodden
fields, ditches lipful of water. But in the most amazing fashion
lights spring up and disappear. Follow one of these lights and you
find nothing but a deserted farm, or a ruined barn, or perhaps nothing
but a field of sugar beets dying in the ground.
Who are these spies? Are they Belgians and French, driven by the ruin
of everything they possess to selling out to the enemy? I think not.
It is much more probable that they are Germans who slip through the
lines in some uncanny fashion, wading and swimming across the
inundation, crawling flat where necessary, and working, an inch at a
time, toward the openings between the trenches. Frightful work, of
course. Impossible work, too, if the popular idea of the trenches were
correct--that is, that they form one long, communicating ditch from
the North Sea to Switzerland! They do not, of course. There are blank
spaces here and there, fully controlled by the trenches on either
side, and reënforced by further trenches behind. But with a knowledge
of where these openings lie it is possible to work through.
Possible, not easy. And there is no mercy for a captured spy.
The troops who had been relieved were moving out of the trenches. Our
progress became extremely slow. The road was lined with men. They
pressed their faces close to the glass of the car and laughed and
talked a little among themselves. Some of them were bandaged. Their
white bandages gleamed in the moonlight. Here and there, as they
passed, one blew on his fingers, for the wind was bitterly cold.
"In a few moments we must get out and walk," I was told. "Is madame a
good walker?"
I said I was a good walker. I had a strong feeling that two or three
people might walk along that road under those starlights much more
safely and inconspicuously than an automobile could move. For
automobiles at the front mean generals as a rule, and are always
subject to attack.
Suddenly the car stopped and a voice called to us sharply. There were
soldiers coming up a side road. I was convinced that we had surprised
an attack, and were in the midst of the German advance. One of the
officers flung the door open and looked out.
But we were only on the wrong road, and must get into reverse and turn
the machine even closer to the front. I know now that there was no
chance of a German attack at that point, that my fears were absurd.
Nevertheless, so keen was the tension that for quite ten minutes my
heart raced madly.
On again. The officers in the car consulted the map and, having
decided on the route, fell into conversation. The officer of the Third
Division, whose mother had been English, had joined the party. He had
been on the staff of General Leman at the time of the capture of
Liège, and he told me of the sensational attempt made by the Germans
to capture the General.
"I was upstairs with him at headquarters," he said, "when word came up
that eight Englishmen had just entered the building with a request to
see him. I was suspicious and we started down the staircase together.
The 'Englishmen' were in the hallway below. As we appeared on the
stairs the man in advance put his hand in his pocket and drew a
revolver. They were dressed in civilians' clothes, but I saw at once
that they were German.
"I was fortunate in getting my revolver out first, and shot down the
man in advance. There was a struggle, in which the General made his
escape and all of the eight were either killed or taken prisoners.
They were uhlans, two officers and six privates."
"It was very brave," I said. "A remarkable exploit."
"Very brave indeed," he agreed with me. "They are all very brave, the
Germans."
Captain F---- had been again consulting his map. Now he put it away.
"Brave but brutal," he said briefly. "I am of the Third Division. I
have watched the German advance protected by women and children. In
the fighting the civilians fell first. They had no weapons. It was
terrible. It is the German system," he went on, "which makes
everything of the end, and nothing at all of the means. It is seen in
the way they have sacrificed their own troops."
"They think you are equally brutal," I said. "The German soldiers
believe that they will have their eyes torn out if they are captured."
I cited a case I knew of, where a wounded German had hidden in the
inundation for five days rather than surrender to the horrors he
thought were waiting for him. When he was found and taken to a
hospital his long days in the water had brought on gangrene and he
could not be saved.
"They have been told that to make them fight more savagely," was the
comment. "What about the official German order for a campaign of
'frightfulness' in Belgium?"
And here, even while the car is crawling along toward the trenches,
perhaps it is allowable to explain the word "frightfulness," which now
so permeates the literature of the war. Following the scenes of the
German invasion into Belgium, where here and there some maddened
civilian fired on the German troops and precipitated the deaths of his
townsmen,[C] Berlin issued, on August twenty-seventh, a declaration,
of which this paragraph is a part:
[Footnote C: The Belgians contend that, in almost every case, such
firing by civilians was the result of attack on their women.]
"The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil
population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to
create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to
the whole country."
A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a comment.
"This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt at justification
for the very acts which Berlin is now attempting to deny!"
That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature of the war.
Captain F---- stopped the car. Near the road was a ruin of an old
church.
"In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleeping when the
Germans, evidently informed by a spy, began to shell it. The first
shot smashed that house there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot
came through the roof and struck one of the supporting pillars,
bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were killed and one hundred and
nine wounded."
He showed me the grave from a window of the car, a great grave in
front of the church, with a wooden cross on it. It was too dark to
read the inscription, but he told me what it said:
"Here lie forty-six _chasseurs_." Beneath are the names, one below the
other in two columns, and underneath all: "_Morts pour la Patrie_."
We continued to advance. Our lamps were out, but the _fusées_ made
progress easy. And there was the moon. We had left behind us the lines
of the silent men. The scene was empty, desolate. Suddenly we stopped
by a low brick house, a one-story building with overhanging eaves.
Sentries with carbines stood under the eaves, flattened against the
wall for shelter from the biting wind.