AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER
A narrow path led up to the house. It was flanked on both sides by
barbed wire, and progress through it was slow. The wind caught my rain
cape and tore it against the barbs. I had to be disentangled. The
sentries saluted, and the low door, through which the officers were
obliged to stoop to enter, was opened by an orderly from within.
We entered The House of the Mill of Saint ----.
The House of the Mill of Saint ---- was less pretentious than its
name. Even at its best it could not have been imposing. Now, partially
destroyed and with its windows carefully screened inside by grain
sacks nailed to the frames for fear of a betraying ray of light, it
was not beautiful. But it was hospitable. A hanging lamp in its one
livable room, a great iron stove, red and comforting, and a large
round table under the lamp made it habitable and inviting. It was
Belgian artillery headquarters, and I was to meet here Colonel
Jacques, one of the military idols of Belgium, the hero of the Congo,
and now in charge of Belgian batteries. In addition, since it was
midnight, we were to sup here.
We were expected, and Colonel Jacques himself waited inside the
living-room door. A tall man, as are almost all the Belgian
officers--which is curious, considering that the troops seem to be
rather under average size--he greeted us cordially. I fancied that
behind his urbanity there was the glimmer of an amused smile. But his
courtesy was beautiful. He put me near the fire and took the next
chair himself.
I had a good chance to observe him. He is no longer a young man, and
beyond a certain military erectness and precision in his movements
there is nothing to mark him the great soldier he has shown himself to
be.
"We are to have supper," he said smilingly in French. "Provided you
have brought something to eat with you!"
"We have brought it," said Captain F----.
The officers of the staff came in and were formally presented. There
was much clicking of heels, much deep and courteous bowing. Then
Captain F---- produced his box of biscuits, and from a capacious
pocket of his army overcoat a tin of bully beef. The House of the Mill
of Saint ---- contributed a bottle of thin white native wine and,
triumphantly, a glass. There are not many glasses along the front.
There was cheese too. And at the end of the meal Colonel Jacques, with
great _empressement_, laid before me a cake of sweet chocolate.
I had to be shown the way to use the bully beef. One of the hard flat
biscuits was split open, spread with butter and then with the beef in
a deep layer. It was quite good, but what with excitement and fatigue
I was not hungry. Everybody ate; everybody talked; and, after asking
my permission, everybody smoked. I sat near the stove and dried my
steaming boots.
Afterward I remembered that with all the conversation there was very
little noise. Our voices were subdued. Probably we might have cheered
in that closed and barricaded house without danger. But the sense of
the nearness of the enemy was over us all, and the business of war was
not forgotten. There were men who came, took orders and went away.
There were maps on the walls and weapons in every corner. Even the
sacking that covered the windows bespoke caution and danger.
Here it was too near the front for the usual peasant family huddled
round its stove in the kitchen, and looking with resignation on these
strange occupants of their house. The humble farm buildings outside
were destroyed.
I looked round the room; a picture or two still hung on the walls, and
a crucifix. There is always a crucifix in these houses. There was a
carbine just beneath this one.
Inside of one of the picture frames one of the Colonel's medals had
been placed, as if for safety.
Colonel Jacques sat at the head of the table and beamed at us all. He
has behind him many years of military service. He has been decorated
again and again for bravery. But, perhaps, when this war is over and
he has time to look back he will smile over that night supper with the
first woman he had seen for months, under the rumble of his own and
the German batteries.
It was time to go to the advance trenches. But before we left one of
the officers who had accompanied me rose and took a folded paper from
a pocket of his tunic. He was smiling.
"I shall read," he said, "a little tribute from one of Colonel
Jacques' soldiers to him."
So we listened. Colonel Jacques sat and smiled; but he is a modest
man, and his fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the table. The
young officer stood and read, glancing up now and then to smile at his
chief's embarrassment. The wind howled outside, setting the sacks at
the windows to vibrating.
This is a part of the poem:
_III_
"_Comme chef nous avons l'homme à la hauteur
Un homme aimé et adoré de tous
L'Colonel Jacques; de lui les hommes sont fous
En lui nous voyons l'emblème de l'honneur.
Des compagnes il en a des tas: En Afrique
Haecht et Dixmude, Ramsdonck et Sart-Tilmau
Et toujours premier et toujours en avant
Toujours en têt' de son beau régiment,
Toujours railleur
Chef au grand coeur_.
_REFRAIN_
"_L'Colo du 12me passe
Regardez ce vaillant
Quand il crie dans l'espace
Joyeus'ment 'En avant!'
Ses hommes, la mine heureuse
Gaîment suivent sa trace
Sur la route glorieuse.
Saluez-le, l'Colo du 12me passe_.
"_AD. DAUVISTER_,
"SOUS-LIEUTENANT."
We applauded. It is curious to remember how cheerful we were, how warm
and comfortable, there at the House of the Mill of Saint ----, with
war only a step away now. Curious, until we think that, of all the
created world, man is the most adaptable. Men and horses! Which is as
it should be now, with both men and horses finding themselves in
strange places, indeed, and somehow making the best of it.
The copy of the poem, which had been printed at the front, probably on
an American hand press, was given to me with Colonel Jacques'
signature on the back, and we prepared to go. There was much donning
of heavy wraps, much bowing and handshaking. Colonel Jacques saw us
out into the wind-swept night. Then the door of the little house
closed again, and we were on our way through the barricade.
Until now our excursion to the trenches, aside from the discomfort of
the weather and the mud, had been fairly safe, although there was
always the chance of a shell. To that now was to be added a fresh
hazard--the sniping that goes on all night long.
Our car moved quietly for a mile, paralleling the trenches. Then it
stopped. The rest of the journey was to be on foot.
All traces of the storm had passed, except for the pools of mud,
which, gleaming like small lakes, filled shell holes in the road. An
ammunition lorry had drawn up in the shadow of a hedge and was
cautiously unloading. Evidently the night's movement of troops was
over, for the roads were empty.
A few feet beyond the lorry we came up to the trenches. We were behind
them, only head and shoulders above.
There was no sign of life or movement, except for the silent _fusées_
that burst occasionally a little to our right. Walking was bad. The
Belgian blocks of the road were coated with slippery mud, and from
long use and erosion the stones themselves were rounded, so that our
feet slipped over them. At the right was a shallow ditch three or four
feet wide. Immediately beyond that was the railway embankment where,
as Captain F---- had explained, the Belgian Army had taken up its
position after being driven back across the Yser.
The embankment loomed shoulder high, and between it and the ditch were
the trenches. There was no sound from them, but sentries halted us
frequently. On such occasions the party stopped abruptly--for here
sentries are apt to fire first and investigate afterward--and one
officer advanced with the password.
There is always something grim and menacing about the attitude of the
sentry as he waits on such occasions. His carbine is not over his
shoulder, but in his hands, ready for use. The bayonet gleams. His
eyes are fixed watchfully on the advance. A false move, and his
overstrained nerves may send the carbine to his shoulder.
We walked just behind the trenches in the moonlight for a mile. No one
said anything. The wind was icy. Across the railroad embankment it
chopped the inundation into small crested waves. Only by putting one's
head down was it possible to battle ahead. From Dixmude came the
intermittent red flashes of guns. But the trenches beside us were
entirely silent.
At the end of a mile we stopped. The road turned abruptly to the right
and crossed the railroad embankment, and at this crossing was the ruin
of what had been the House of the Barrier, where in peaceful times the
crossing tender lived.
It had been almost destroyed. The side toward the German lines was
indeed a ruin, but one room was fairly whole. However, the door had
been shot away. To enter, it was necessary to lift away an
extemporised one of planks roughly nailed together, which leaned
against the aperture.
The moving of the door showed more firelight, and a very small, shaded
and smoky lamp on a stand. There were officers here again. The little
house is slightly in front of the advanced trenches, and once inside
it was possible to realise its exposed position. Standing as it does
on the elevation of the railroad, it is constantly under fire. It is
surrounded by barbed wire and flanked by trenches in which are
_mitrailleuses_.
The walls were full of shell holes, stuffed with sacks of straw or
boarded over. What had been windows were now jagged openings,
similarly closed. The wind came through steadily, smoking the chimney
of the lamp and making the flame flicker.
There was one chair.
I wish I could go farther. I wish I could say that shells were
bursting overhead, and that I sat calmly in the one chair and made
notes. I sat, true enough, but I sat because I was tired and my feet
were wet. And instead of making notes I examined my new six-guinea
silk rubber rain cape for barbed-wire tears. Not a shell came near.
The German battery across had ceased firing at dusk that evening, and
was playing pinochle four hundred yards away across the inundation.
The snipers were writing letters home.
It is true that any time an artilleryman might lose a game and go out
and fire a gun to vent his spleen or to keep his hand in. And the
snipers might begin to notice that the rain was over, and that there
was suspicious activity at the House of the Barrier. And, to take away
the impression of perfect peace, big guns were busy just north and
south of us. Also, just where we were the Germans had made a terrific
charge three nights before to capture an outpost. But the fact remains
that I brought away not even a bullet hole through the crown of my
soft felt hat.