FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION
The car stopped. We were at the wireless and telephone headquarters
for the French Army of the North. It was a low brick building, and
outside, just off the roadway, was a high van full of telephone
instruments. That it was moved from one place to another was shown
when, later in the day, returning by that route, we found the van had
disappeared.
It was two o'clock. The German wireless from Berlin had just come in.
At three the receiving station would hear from the Eiffel Tower in
Paris. It was curious to stand there and watch the operator, receivers
on his ears, picking up the German message. It was curious to think
that, just a little way over there, across a field or two, the German
operator was doing the same thing, and that in an hour he would be
receiving the French message.
All the batteries of the army corps are--or were--controlled from that
little station. The colonel in charge came out to greet us, and to him
Captain Boisseau gave General Foch's request to show me batteries in
action.
The colonel was very willing. He would go with us himself. I conquered
a strong desire to stand with the telephone building between me and
the German lines, now so near, and looked about. A French aëroplane
was overhead, but there was little bustle and activity along the road.
It is a curious fact in this war that the nearer one is to the front
the quieter things become. Three or four miles behind there is bustle
and movement. A mile behind, and only an occasional dispatch rider, a
few men mending roads, an officer's car, a few horses tethered in a
wood, a broken gun carriage, a horse being shod behind a wall, a
soldier on a lookout platform in a tree, thickets and hedges that on
occasion spout fire and death--that is the country round Ypres and
just behind the line, in daylight.
We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that arc which the
Germans are, as I write, trying so hard to break through. The papers
say that they are shelling Ypres and that it is burning. They were
shelling it that day also. But now, as then, I cannot believe it is
burning. There was nothing left to burn.
While arrangements were being made to visit the batteries, Lieutenant
Puaux explained to me a method they had established at that point for
measuring the altitude of hostile aëroplanes for the guns.
"At some anti-aircfaft batteries," he explained, "they have the
telemeter for that purpose. But here there is none. So they use the
system of _visée laterale_, or side sight, literally."
He explained it all carefully to me. I understood it at the time, I
think.
I remember saying it was perfectly clear, and a child could do it, and
a number of other things. But the system of _visée laterale_ has gone
into that part of my mind which contains the Latin irregular verbs,
harmonies, the catechism and answers to riddles.
There is a curious feeling that comes with the firing of a large
battery at an unseen enemy. One moment the air is still; there is a
peaceful plain round. The sun shines, and heavy cart horses, drawing a
wagon filled with stones for repairing a road, are moving forward
steadily, their heads down, their feet sinking deep in the mud. The
next moment hell breaks loose. The great guns stand with smoking jaws.
The message of death has gone forth. Over beyond the field and that
narrow line of trees, what has happened? A great noise, the furious
recoiling of the guns, an upcurling of smoke--that is the firing of a
battery. But over there, perhaps, one man, or twenty, or fifty men,
lying still.
So I required assurance that this battery was not being fired for me.
I had no morbid curiosity as to batteries. One of the officers assured
me that I need have no concern. Though they were firing earlier than
had been intended, a German battery had been located and it was their
instructions to disable it.
The battery had been well concealed.
"No German aëroplane has as yet discovered it," explained the officer
in charge.
To tell the truth, I had not yet discovered it myself. We had alighted
from the machine in a sea of mud. There was mud everywhere.
A farmhouse to the left stood inaccessible in it. Down the road a few
feet a tree with an observation platform rose out of it. A few
chickens waded about in it. A crowd of soldiers stood at a respectful
distance and watched us. But I saw no guns.
One of the officers stooped and picked up the cast shoe of a battery
horse, and shaking the mud off, presented it to me.
"To bring you luck," he said, "and perhaps luck to the battery!"
We left the road, and turning to the right made a floundering progress
across a field to a hedge. Only when we were almost there did I
realise that the hedge was the battery.
"We built it," said the officer in charge. "We brought the trees and
saplings and constructed it. Madame did not suspect?"
Madame had not suspected. There were other hedges in the
neighbourhood, and the artificial one had been well contrived. Halfway
through the field the party paused by a curious elevation, flat,
perhaps twenty feet across and circular.
"The cyclone cellar!" some one said. "We will come here during the
return fire."
But one look down the crude steps decided me to brave the return fire
and die in the open. The cave below the flat roof, turf-covered
against the keen eyes of aeroplanes, was full of water. The officers
watched my expression and smiled.
And now we had reached the battery, and eager gunners were tearing
away the trees and shrubbery that covered them. In an incredible space
of time the great grey guns, sinister, potential of death, lay open to
the bright sky. The crews gathered round, each man to his place. The
shell was pushed home, the gunners held the lanyards.
"Open your mouth wide," said the officer in charge, and gave the
signal.
The great steel throats were torn open. The monsters recoiled, as if
aghast at what they had done. Their white smoke curled from the
muzzles. The dull horses in the road lifted their heads.
And over there, beyond the line of poplar trees, what?
One by one they fired the great guns. Then all together, several
rounds. The air was torn with noise. Other batteries, far and near,
took up the echo. The lassitude of the deadlock was broken.
And then overhead the bursting shell of a German gun. The return fire
had commenced!
I had been under fire before. The sound of a bursting shell was not a
new one. But there had always before been a strong element of chance
in my favour. When the Germans were shelling a town, who was I that a
shell should pick me out to fall on or to explode near? But this was
different. They were firing at a battery, and I was beside that
battery. It was all very well for the officer in charge to have said
they had never located his battery. I did not believe him. I still
doubt him. For another shell came.
The soldiers from the farmhouse had gathered behind us in the field. I
turned and looked at them. They were smiling. So I summoned a shaky
smile myself and refused the hospitality of the cellar full of water.
One of the troopers stepped out from the others.
"We have just completed a small bridge," he said--"a bridge over the
canal. Will madame do us the honour of walking across it? It will thus
be inaugurated by the only lady at the front."
Madame would. Madame did. But without any real enthusiasm. The men
cheered, and another German shell came, and everything was merry as a
marriage bell.
They invited me to climb the ladder to the lookout in the tree and
look at the enemy's trenches. But under the circumstances I declined.
I felt that it was time to move on and get hence. The honour of being
the only woman who had got to the front at Ypres began to weigh heavy
on me. I mentioned the passing of time and the condition of the roads.
So at last I got into the car. The officers of the battery bowed, and
the men, some fifty of them, gave me three rousing cheers. I think of
them now, and there is a lump in my throat. They were so interested,
so smiling and cheery, that bright late February afternoon, standing
in the mud of the battlefield of Ypres, with German shells bursting
overhead. Half of them, even then, had been killed or wounded. Each
day took its toll of some of them, one way or another.
How many of them are left to-day? The smiling officer, so debonair, so
proud of his hidden battery, where is he? The tiny bridge, has it run
red this last week? The watchman in the tree, what did he see, that
terrible day when the Germans got across the canal and charged over
the flat lands?
The Germans claim to have captured guns at or near this place. One
thing I am sure of: This battery or another, it was not taken while
there were men belonging to it to defend it. The bridge would run red
and the water under the bridge, the muddy field be strewn with bodies,
before those cheery, cool-eyed and indomitable French gunners would
lose their guns.
The car moved away, fifty feet, a hundred feet, and turned out to
avoid an ammunition wagon, disabled in the road. It was fatal. We slid
off into the mire and settled down. I looked back at the battery. A
fresh shell was bursting high in the air.
We sat there, interminable hours that were really minutes, while an
orderly and the chauffeur dug us out with spades. We conversed of
other things. But it was a period of uneasiness on my part. And, as if
to point the lesson and adorn the tale, away to the left, rising above
the plain, was the church roof with the hole in it--mute evidence that
even the mantle of righteousness is no protection against a shell.
Our course was now along a road just behind the trenches and
paralleling them, to an anti-aircraft station.
I have seen a number of anti-aircraft stations at the front: English
ones near the coast and again south of Ypres; guns mounted, as was
this French battery, on the plain of a battlefield; isolated cannon in
towers and on the tops of buildings and water tanks. I have seen them
in action, firing at hostile planes. I have never yet seen them do any
damage, but they serve a useful purpose in keeping the scouting
machines high in the air, thus rendering difficult the work of the
enemy's observer. The real weapon against the hostile aeroplane is
another machine. Several times I have seen German _Taubes_ driven off
by French aviators, and winging a swift flight back to their lines.
Not, one may be sure, through any lack of courage on the part of
German aviators. They are fearless and extremely skilful. But because
they have evidently been instructed to conserve their machines.
I had considerable curiosity as to the anti-aircraft batteries. How
was it possible to manipulate a large field gun, with a target moving
at a varying height, and at a speed velocity of, say, sixty miles an
hour?
The answer was waiting on the field just north of Ypres.
A brick building by the road was evidently a storehouse for provisions
for the trenches. Unloaded in front of it were sacks of bread, meal
and provisions. And standing there in the sunshine was the commander
of the field battery, Captain Mignot. A tall and bearded man,
essentially grave, he listened while Lieutenant Puaux explained the
request from General Foch that I see his battery. He turned and
scanned the sky.
"We regret," he said seriously, "that at the moment there is no
aëroplane in sight. We will, however, show Madame everything."
He led the way round the corner of the building to where a path,
neatly banked, went out through the mud to the battery.
"Keep to the path," said a tall sign. But there was no temptation to
do otherwise. There must have been fifty acres to that field, unbroken
by hedge or tree. As we walked out, Captain Mignot paused and pointed
his finger up and somewhat to the right.
"German shrapnel!" he said. True enough, little spherical clouds told
where it had burst harmlessly.
As cannonading had been going on steadily all the afternoon, no one
paid any particular attention. We walked on in the general direction
of the trenches.
The gunners were playing prisoner's base just beyond the guns. When
they saw us coming the game ceased, and they hurried to their
stations. Boys they were, most of them. The youth of the French troops
had not impressed me so forcibly as had the boyishness of the English
and the Belgians. They are not so young, on an average, I believe. But
also the deception of maturity is caused by a general indifference to
shaving while in the field.
But Captain Mignot evidently had his own ideas of military smartness,
and these lads were all clean-shaven. They trooped in from their game,
under that little cloud of shrapnel smoke that still hung in the sky,
for all the world a crowd of overheated and self-conscious schoolboys
receiving an unexpected visit from the master of the school.
The path ended at the battery. In the centre of the guns was a raised
platform of wood, and a small shelter house for the observer or
officer on duty. There were five guns in pits round this focal point
and forming a circle. And on the platform in the centre was a curious
instrument on a tripod.
"The telemeter," explained Captain Mignot; "for obtaining the altitude
of the enemy's aëroplane."
Once again we all scanned the sky anxiously, but uselessly.
"I don't care to have any one hurt," I said; "but if a plane is coming
I wish it would come now. Or a Zeppelin."
The captain's serious face lighted in a smile.
"A Zeppelin!" he said. "We would with pleasure wait all the night for
a Zeppelin!"
He glanced round at the guns. Every gunner was in his place. We were
to have a drill.
"We will suppose," he said, "that a German aëroplane is approaching.
To fire correctly we must first know its altitude. So we discover that
with this." He placed his hand on the telemeter. "There are, you
observe, two apertures, one for each eye. In one the aëroplane is seen
right side up. In the other the image is inverted, upside down. Now!
By this screw the images are made to approach, until one is
superimposed exactly over the other. Immediately on the lighted dial
beneath is shown the altitude, in metres."
I put my eyes to the openings, and tried to imagine an aëroplane
overhead, manoeuvring to drop a bomb or a dart on me while I
calculated its altitude. I could not do it.
Next I was shown the guns. They were the famous
seventy-five-millimetre guns of France, transformed into aircraft guns
by the simple expedient of installing them in a pit with sloping
sides, so that their noses pointed up and out. To swing them round, so
that they pointed readily toward any portion of the sky, a circular
framework of planks formed a round rim to the pit, and on this runway,
heavily greased, the muzzles were swung about.
The gun drill began. It was executed promptly, skilfully. There was no
bungling, not a wrong motion or an unnecessary one, as they went
through the movements of loading, sighting and firing the guns. It was
easy to see why French artillery has won its renown. The training of
the French artilleryman is twice as severe as that of the infantryman.
Each man, in addition to knowing his own work on the gun, must be able
to do the work of all the eleven others. Casualties must occur, and in
spite of them the work of the gun must go on.
Casualties had occurred at that station. More than half the original
battery was gone. The little shelter house was splintered in a hundred
places. There were shell holes throughout the field, and the breech of
one gun had recently been shattered and was undergoing repair.
The drill was over and the gunners stood at attention. I asked
permission to photograph the battery, and it was cheerfully given. One
after the other I took the guns, until I had taken four. The gunners
waited smilingly expectant. For the last gun I found I had no film,
but I could not let it go at that. So I pointed the empty camera at it
and snapped the shutter. It would never do to show discrimination.
Somewhere in London are all those pictures. They have never been sent
to me. No doubt a watchful English government pounced on them in the
mail, and, in connection with my name, based on them most unjust
suspicions. They were very interesting. There was Captain Mignot, and
the two imposing officers from General Foch's staff; there were
smiling young French gunners; there was the telemeter, which cost,
they told me, ten thousand francs, and surely deserved to have its
picture taken, and there was one, not too steady, of a patch of sunny
sky and a balloon-shaped white cloud, where another German shrapnel
had burst overhead.
The drill was over. We went back along the path toward the road.
Behind the storehouse the evening meal was preparing in a shed. The
battery was to have a new ration that night for a change, bacon and
codfish. Potatoes were being pared into a great kettle and there was a
bowl of eggs on a stand. It appeared to me, accustomed to the meagre
ration of the Belgians, that the French were dining well that night on
the plains of Ypres.
In a stable near at hand a horse whinnied. I patted him as I passed,
and he put his head against my shoulder.
"He recognises you!" said Captain Boisseau. "He too is American."
It was late afternoon by that time. The plan to reach the advanced
trenches was frustrated by an increasing fusillade from the front.
There were barbed-wire entanglements everywhere, and every field was
honeycombed with trenches. One looked across the plain and saw
nothing. Then suddenly as we advanced great gashes cut across the
fields, and in these gashes, although not a head was seen, were men.
The firing was continuous. And now, going down a road, with a line of
poplar trees at the foot and the setting sun behind us throwing out
faint shadows far ahead, we saw the flash of water. It was very near.
It was the flooded river and the canal. Beyond, eight hundred yards or
less from where we stood, were the Germans. To one side the inundation
made a sort of bay.
It was along this part of the field that the Allies expected the
German Army to make its advance when the spring movement commenced.
And as nearly as can be learned from the cabled accounts that is where
the attack was made.
A captain from General d'Urbal's staff met us at the trenches, and
pointed out the strategical value of a certain place, the certainty of
a German advance, and the preparations that were made to meet it.
It was odd to stand there in the growing dusk, looking across to where
was the invading army, only a little over two thousand feet away. It
was rather horrible to see that beautiful landscape, the untravelled
road ending in the line of poplars, so very close, where were the
French outposts, and the shining water just beyond, and talk so calmly
of the death that was waiting for the first Germans who crossed the
canal.