IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE"
I was taken to see the battlefield of Ypres by Captain Boisseau, of
the French War Academy, and Lieutenant René Puaux, of the staff of
General Foch. It was a bright and sunny day, with a cold wind,
however, that set the water in the wayside ditches to rippling.
All the night before I had wakened at intervals to heavy cannonading
and the sharp cracking of _mitrailleuse_. We were well behind the
line, but the wind was coming from the direction of the battlefield.
The start was made from in front of General Foch's headquarters. He
himself put me in the car, and bowed an _au revoir_.
"You will see," he said, "the French soldier in the field, and you
will see him cheerful and well. You will find him full also of
invincible courage and resolution."
And all that he had said, I found. I found the French soldiers smiling
and cheerful and ruddy in the most wretched of billets. I found them
firing at the enemy, still cheerful, but with a coolness of courage
that made my own shaking nerves steady themselves.
Today, when that very part of the line I visited is, as was expected
when I was there, bearing the brunt of the German attack in the most
furious fighting of the war, I wonder, of those French soldiers who
crowded round to see the first woman they had beheld for months, how
many are lying on that muddy battlefield? What has happened on that
road, guarded by buried quick-firers, that stretched to the German
trenches beyond the poplar trees? Did the "rabbit trap" do its work?
Only for a time, I think, for was it not there that the Germans broke
through? Did the Germans find and silence that concealed battery of
seventy-five-millimetre guns under its imitation hedge? Who was in the
tree lookout as the enemy swarmed across, and did he get away?
Except for the constant road repairing there was little to see during
the first part of the journey. Here in a flat field, well beyond the
danger zone, some of the new British Army was digging practice
trenches in the mud. Their tidy uniforms were caked with dirt, their
faces earnest and flushed. At last the long training at Salisbury
Plain was over, and here they were, if not at the front, within
hearing distance of the guns. Any day now a bit of luck would move
them forward, and there would be something doing.
By now, no doubt, they have been moved up and there has been something
doing. Poor lads! I watched them until even their khaki-coloured tents
had faded into the haze. The tall, blonde, young officer, Lieutenant
Puaux, pointed out to me a detachment of Belgian soldiers mending
roads. As our car passed they leaned on their spades and looked after
us.
"Belgian carabineers," he said. "They did some of the most heroic work
of the war last summer and autumn. They were decorated by the King.
Now they are worn out and they mend roads!"
For--and this I had to learn--a man may not fight always, even
although he escapes actual injury. It is the greatest problem of
commanding generals that they must be always moving forward fresh
troops. The human element counts for much in any army. Nerves go after
a time. The constant noise of the guns has sent men mad.
More than ever, in this new warfare, is the problem serious. For days
the men suffer not only the enemy's guns but the roar of their own
batteries from behind them. They cannot always tell which side they
hear. Their tortured ears ache with listening. And when they charge
and capture an outpost it is not always certain that they will escape
their own guns. In one tragic instance that I know of this happened.
The route was by way of Poperinghe, with its narrow, crowded streets,
its fresh troops just arrived and waiting patiently, heavy packs
beside them, for orders. In Poperinghe are found all the troops of the
Allies: British, Belgian, French, Hindus, Cingalese, Algerians,
Moroccans. Its streets are a series of colourful pictures, of quaint
uniforms, of a babel of tongues, of that minor confusion that is order
on a great scale. The inevitable guns rumbled along with six horses
and three drivers: a lead driver, a centre driver and wheel driver.
Unlike the British guns, there are generally no gunners with the guns,
but only an officer or two. The gunners go ahead on foot. Lines of
hussars rode by, making their way slowly round a train of British
Red-Cross ambulances.
At Elverdingue I was to see the men in their billets. Elverdingue was
another Poperinghe--the same crowds of soldiers, the same confusion,
only perhaps more emphasised, for Elverdingue is very near the front,
between Poperinghe and Ypres and a little to the north, where the line
that curves out about Ypres bends back again.
More guns, more hussars. It was difficult to walk across the narrow
streets. We watched our chance and broke through at last, going into a
house at random. As each house had soldiers billeted in it, it was
certain we would find some, and I was to see not selected quarters but
billets chosen at random. Through a narrow, whitewashed centre hall,
with men in the rooms on either side, and through a muddy kitchen,
where the usual family was huddled round a stove, we went into a tiny,
brick-paved yard. Here was a shed, a roof only, which still held what
remained of the winter's supply of coal.
Two soldiers were cooking there. Their tiny fire of sticks was built
against a brick wall, and on it was a large can of stewing meat. One
of the cooks--they were company cooks--was watching the kettle and
paring potatoes in a basket. The other was reading a letter aloud. As
the officers entered the men rose and saluted, their bright eyes
taking in this curious party, which included, of all things, a woman!
"When did you get in from the trenches?" one of the officers asked.
"At two o'clock this morning, _Monsieur le Capitaine_."
"And you have not slept?"
"But no. The men must eat. We have cooked ever since we returned."
Further questioning elicited the facts that he would sleep when his
company was fed, that he was twenty-two years old, and that--this not
by questions but by investigation--he was sheltered against the cold
by a large knitted muffler, an overcoat, a coat, a green sweater, a
flannel shirt and an undershirt. Under his blue trousers he wore also
the red ones of an old uniform, the red showing through numerous rents
and holes.
"You have a letter, comrade!" said the Lieutenant to the other man.
"From my family," was the somewhat sheepish reply.
Round the doorway other soldiers had gathered to see what was
occurring. They came, yawning with sleep, from the straw they had been
sleeping on, or drifted in from the streets, where they had been
smoking in the sun. They were true republicans, those French soldiers.
They saluted the officers without subservience, but as man to man. And
through a break in the crowd a new arrival was shoved forward. He
came, smiling uneasily.
"He has the new uniform," I was informed, and he must turn round to
show me how he looked in it.
We went across the street and through an alleyway to an open place
where stood an old coach house. Here were more men, newly in from the
front. The coach house was a ruin, far from weather-proof and floored
with wet and muddy straw. One could hardly believe that that straw had
been dry and fresh when the troops came in at dawn. It was hideous
now, from the filth of the trenches. The men were awake, and being
advised of our coming by an anxious and loud-voiced member of the
company who ran ahead, they were on their feet, while others, who had
been sleeping in the loft, were on their way down the ladder.
"They have been in a very bad place all night," said the Captain.
"They are glad to be here, they say."
"You mean that they have been in a dangerous place?"
The men were laughing among themselves and pushing forward one of
their number. Urged by their rapid French, he held out his cap to me.
It had been badly torn by a German bullet. Encouraged by his example,
another held out his cap. The crown had been torn almost out of it.
"You see," said Captain Boisseau, "it was not a comfortable night. But
they are here, and they are content."
I could understand it, of course, but "here" seemed so pitifully poor
a place--a wet and cold and dirty coach house, open to all the winds
that blew; before it a courtyard stabling army horses that stood to
the fetlocks in mud. For food they had what the boy of twenty-two or
other cooks like him were preparing over tiny fires built against
brick walls. But they were alive, and there were letters from home,
and before very long they expected to drive the Germans back in one of
those glorious charges so dear to the French heart. They were here,
and they were content.
More sheds, more small fires, more paring of potatoes and onions and
simmering of stews. The meal of the day was in preparation and its
odours were savoury. In one shed I photographed the cook, paring
potatoes with a knife that looked as though it belonged on the end of
a bayonet. And here I was lined up by the fire and the cook--and the
knife--and my picture taken. It has not yet reached me. Perhaps it
went by way of England, and was deleted by the censor as showing
munitions of war!
From Elverdingue the road led north and west, following the curves of
the trenches. We went through Woesten, where on the day before a
dramatic incident had taken place. Although the town was close to the
battlefield and its church in plain view from the German lines, it had
escaped bombardment. But one Sunday morning a shot was fired. The
shell went through the roof of the church just above the altar, fell
and exploded, killing the priest as he knelt. The hole in the roof of
the building bore mute evidence to this tragedy. It was a small hole,
for the shell exploded inside the building. When I saw it a half dozen
planks had been nailed over it to keep out the rain.
There were trees outside Woesten, more trees than I had been
accustomed to nearer the sea. Here and there a troop of cavalry horses
was corralled in a grove; shaggy horses, not so large as the English
ones. They were confined by the simple expedient of stretching a rope
from tree to tree in a large circle.
"French horses," I said, "always look to me so small and light
compared with English horses."
Then a horse moved about, and on its shaggy flank showed plainly the
mark of a Western branding iron! They were American cow ponies from
the plains.
"There are more than a hundred thousand American horses here,"
observed the Lieutenant. "They are very good horses."
Later on I stopped to stroke the soft nose of a black horse as it
stood trembling near a battery of heavy guns that was firing steadily.
It was American too. On its flank there was a Western brand. I gave it
an additional caress, and talked a little American into one of its
nervous, silky ears. We were both far from home, a trifle bewildered,
a bit uneasy and frightened.
And now it was the battlefield--the flat, muddy plain of Ypres. On the
right bodies of men, sheltered by intervening groves and hedges, moved
about. Dispatch riders on motor cycles flew along the roads, and over
the roof of a deserted farmhouse an observation balloon swung in the
wind. Beyond the hedges and the grove lay the trenches, and beyond
them again German batteries were growling. Their shells, however, were
not bursting anywhere near us.
The balloon was descending. I asked permission to go up in it, but
when I saw it near at hand I withdrew the request. It had no basket,
like the ones I had seen before, but instead the observers, two of
them, sat astride a horizontal bar.
The English balloons have a basket beneath, I am told. One English
airship man told me that to be sent up in a stationary balloon was the
greatest penalty a man could be asked to pay. The balloon jerks at the
end of its rope like a runaway calf, and "the resulting nausea makes
sea-sickness seem like a trip to the Crystal Palace."
So I did not go up in that observation balloon on the field of Ypres.
We got out of the car, and trudged after the balloon as it was carried
to its new position by many soldiers. We stood by as it rose again
above the tree tops, the rope and the telephone wire hanging beneath
it. But what the observers saw that afternoon from their horizontal
bar I do not yet know--trenches, of course. But trenches are
interesting in this war only when their occupants have left them and
started forward. Batteries and ammunition trains, probably, the latter
crawling along the enemy's roads. But both of these can be better and
more easily located by aëroplanes.
The usefulness of the captive balloon in this war is doubtful. It
serves, at the best, to take the place of an elevation of land in this
flat country, is a large and tempting target, and can serve only on
very clear days, when there is no ground mist--a difficult thing to
achieve in Flanders.
We were getting closer to the front all the time. As the automobile
jolted on, drawing out for transports, for ambulances and ammunition
wagons, the two French officers spoke of the heroism of their men.
They told me, one after the other, of brave deeds that had come under
their own observation.
"The French common soldier is exceedingly brave--quite reckless," one
of them said. "Take, for instance, the case, a day or so ago, of
Philibert Musillat, of the 168th Infantry. We had captured a
communication trench from the Germans and he was at the end of it,
alone. There was a renewal of the German attack, and they came at him
along the trench. He refused to retreat. His comrades behind handed
him loaded rifles, and he killed every German that appeared until they
lay in a heap. The Germans threw bombs at him, but he would not move.
He stood there for more than twelve hours!"
There were many such stories, such as that of the boys of the senior
class of the military school of St. Cyr, who took, the day of the
beginning of the war, an oath to put on gala dress, white gloves and a
red, white and blue plume, when they had the honour to receive the
first order to charge.
They did it, too. Theatrical? Isn't it just splendidly boyish? They
did it, you see. The first of them to die, a young sub-lieutenant, was
found afterward, his red, white and blue plume trampled in the mud,
his brave white gloves stained with his own hot young blood. Another
of these St. Cyr boys, shot in the face hideously and unable to speak,
stood still under fire and wrote his orders to his men. It was his
first day under fire.
A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front of his trench and
the enemy, in that No Man's Land of so many tragedies. His comrades,
afraid of hitting him, stopped firing.
"Go on!" he called to them. "No matter about me. Shoot at them!"
So they fired, and he writhed for a moment.
"I got one of yours that time!" he said.
The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the ground, beyond
reach. He ceased moving, and they thought he was dead. One may believe
that they hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the slow dying
of No Man's Land. But after a time he raised his head.
"Look out," he called. "They are coming again. They are almost up to
me!"
That is all of that story.