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Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
[Illustration: [See page 2
"A FEW SECONDS LATER THE TWO GREAT PROPELLERS BEGAN TO FLASH ROUND"]
OVER THE FRONT IN AN AEROPLANE
AND SCENES INSIDE THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH TRENCHES
by
RALPH PULITZER
Illustrated
[Illustration]
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
OVER THE FRONT IN AN AEROPLANE
-------
Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
TO MY WIFE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A FLIGHT TO THE FIRING LINE 1
II. HOW THE FRONT IS VISITED 16
III. IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES 41
IV. A TYPICAL DAY'S TOUR 59
V. A GRENADE-THROWING SCHOOL 88
VI. WITH THE BELGIAN BATTERIES 99
VII. IN THE FLEMISH TRENCHES 120
VIII. LESSONS 140
ILLUSTRATIONS
"A FEW SECONDS LATER THE TWO GREAT PROPELLERS
BEGAN TO FLASH ROUND" _Frontispiece_
"BELOW US STRETCHED AN UNBROKEN WHITE OCEAN OF
THESE LOWER CLOUDS" _Facing p._ 6
"THERE WERE AUTOS WITH ... RAZOR-EDGED
KNIFE-BLADES ATTACHED" " 32
CAPTAIN D'A---- AND THE AUTHOR " 32
"THERE MASS IS STILL HELD EVERY SUNDAY FOR THE
BENEFIT OF THE SIXTEEN INHABITANTS WHO STILL
PERSISTED IN STAYING IN THE VILLAGE" " 48
THE AUTHOR IN A FRONT TRENCH NEAR RHEIMS " 52
"WE WERE COMPLETELY ABSORBED IN WATCHING THE
SOFT LITTLE CLOUDS PLAYFULLY DANCING ALONG
AHEAD OF THE LAZILY DRIFTING AEROPLANE" " 68
"AS WE HIKED ALONG AT THE GENERAL'S FAVORITE
PACE" " 72
"A HEAVY FIELD-PIECE STANDING ON TREADLED
WHEELS" " 72
PART OF THE ENORMOUS ENCAMPMENT OF SUPPLY-WAGONS,
WHICH CARRY THE COMPLETE SUPPLIES FOR THREE
FULL DAYS FOR ONE ARMY CORPS " 84
"COLONEL D----, COMMANDING THE ARTILLERY OF THE
SECTOR" " 104
THE AUTHOR IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHELL-PITS, WHICH
WERE TEN FEET DEEP AND TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER " 104
COMMANDANT L---- IN THE NICKEL-STEEL SKULL-CAP
WHICH HE WORE INSIDE HIS KHAKI CAP " 120
"THE CHAUFFEUR REACHED THE OPEN PLACE BY THE
CHURCH" " 126
ON THE SHATTERED CHURCH HUNG THIS CRUCIFIX INTACT
THOUGH SURROUNDED BY SHRAPNEL HOLES " 126
UNDER HEAVY FIRE IN A BELGIAN COMMUNICATING-TRENCH " 136
OVER THE FRONT IN AN AEROPLANE
I
A FLIGHT TO THE FIRING LINE
PARIS, _August 13th_ (_Friday_).
I have just returned from a unique visit to the front. This afternoon
I flew in an army aeroplane from Paris to the fighting lines, skirted
these lines for a few kilometres, and flew back to Paris.
We made the round trip without a break.
I am indebted to the quite exceptional kindness of the French Foreign
Office and of the French War Office for this flight. No other civilian
has been allowed to ascend in a French army aeroplane at all, and as
for visiting the front in one, it has apparently been undreamed of.
Poor Needham went up in a British military aeroplane, but what he saw
and felt were buried with him.
I received definite word yesterday evening that at four-thirty this
afternoon I would find a military motor at the door of my hotel; that
it would take me to the great aviation station in the suburbs of Paris,
and that at five-thirty o'clock a double-cylindered battle-plane would
set flight with me.
Everything ran like clockwork. At five o'clock I was shaking hands
with the Captain of this most important aviation station, and he was
explaining to me just how, day and night, his aeroplanes guarded Paris
from German air attacks.
At five-thirty o'clock I was struggling into a heavy leather suit which
I put on over my regular clothes and a heavy padded helmet which was
carefully fastened under my chin by a buttoned flap and also an elastic
band.
A few minutes later I was climbing sinuously into my seat in the
front of the aeroplane while my pilot wormed his way into his seat a
few feet behind me. A few seconds later the two great propellers (or
rather tractors) began to flash around. With a snap and a roar the
battle-plane started slowly forward, gained in speed till we were
running along the big field like a racing automobile, then suddenly the
people standing around dropped away from us as if on a gigantic express
elevator leaving one standing on the upper floor of a skyscraper, and
in a moment more the earth had become a strange and placid panorama
with which we had no connection or concern.
On and up, on and up, we flew, headed straight as an arrow for
the closest portion of the battle-front, ninety kilometres (about
fifty-four miles) away.
As the vast crazy-quilt of numberless shades of green and brown rolled
slowly below us I had time to pay more attention to my immediate
surroundings. I sat in the front, or observer's seat, of a great
new French biplane which the English call a battle-plane, and the
French call an "avion de chasse," or "hunting aeroplane." They call
their smaller single-motored machines their "avions de réglage," or
"regulating aeroplanes." But these great biplanes they fondly call
their hunting aeroplanes, for with them they hunt the Taubes and the
aviatiks of the enemy, and they tell me that their enemy usually gives
them a wide berth.
I found myself sitting in a little cockpit strapped to a comfortable
seat. A few inches in front of my nose was the breach of a heavy
machine-gun whose muzzle projected over the bow of the fuselage. At
each side of my seat, under my elbows, were coiled long belts of
cartridges for the machine-gun. In the floor of the little cockpit,
right in front of my feet, was a little glass window through which I
could watch the ground passing directly (though some thousand feet)
underneath. Just behind this window, in the floor under my feet, was a
little metal trap-door. By straddling my feet I could open this, for
the purpose either of taking vertical photographs or of dropping bombs.
Only the three long, shell-like bombs which generally hang in straps to
the left of the observer had been removed, as had also the Winchester
rifle which hangs to his right.
I could get an uninterrupted view of the scenery across a space of
about four feet right ahead. Further to right and left the view
flickered curiously through the lightning-swift twirling of the
propeller-blades. "Don't stretch your head out in front to either
side," had cautioned the aviation Captain before I left the earth, "or
you would certainly get guillotined." I craned my neck gingerly round
to look beyond me. In another little cockpit about four feet aft sat
the pilot. I could see his face peering over the edge through a low
windshield. Past his head on each side I got a view of the country we
were leaving behind.
This happened to be a farewell glimpse of Paris. It stretched vaguely
away, bathed in the late afternoon sun and yet shrouded in heavy haze
and smoke, a sort of bird's-eye Whistler.
Now feeling the air becoming distinctly colder, I looked ahead again.
For a time we had been flying at 1,000 metres. Now we gradually climbed
to 2,000 metres. The outrunners of the clouds began to drift by in
wisps of what seemed like mist. Below, the earth looked like the
display of a carpet-merchant's dreams. Square carpets, oblong carpets,
long strips of carpets, carpets of light green, of dark green, of
every intermediate shade of green; carpets of fawn color and of brown,
thin carpets and carpets of wonderfully thick pile, plain carpets and
carpets with symmetrical designs in light brown dots (several thousand
feet nearer those dots would have resolved themselves into homely
haycocks).
Now the carpets stopped as we sailed over a forest of dense dark green
with little mirrors stuck in it, which, when looked at through my
field-glasses, proved to be not the tops of greenhouses, as I had at
first imagined, but big lakes.
And now the wisps of mist became banks of fog. As we still climbed
on upward through these white banks the earth could only be seen in
isolated dark patches. Higher and higher we climbed, till finally the
earth was entirely veiled by the clouds below us. At a height of 3,000
metres, or 9,900 feet, we straightened our angle and on an even keel
headed away toward the front. It was a magnificent sight. We were
flying along in a clear belt between the lower and the upper clouds.
Below us stretched an unbroken white ocean of these lower clouds. The
sun was just high enough to shed its slanting beams along the surface
of this snow-white sea. Above us were the lowering masses of the higher
clouds.
[Illustration: Page 6
"BELOW US STRETCHED AN UNBROKEN WHITE OCEAN OF THESE LOWER CLOUDS"]
In this lonely world of our own we flew forward at 130 kilometres (80
miles approximately) an hour. The air was very thin and cold, but for
some reason there was no rush of wind against my face. If I moved my
head to right or left I could feel the wind from either propeller, but
in the middle it was relatively calm. The air felt very thin to breathe
and I had to swallow constantly to keep clearing my ears and the tubes
back of my nose.
On and on we flew, until finally I felt, instead of hearing, a violent
rapping. Turning my head, I saw the pilot hammering with his right fist
on the deck between our cockpits to attract my attention. He grinned
amicably and opened his mouth wide. I could see he was shouting at me,
but could not hear the faintest sound over the roar of the propellers.
He pointed to the whiteness below us a little to the right. Then he
wrote an imaginary word with his forefinger on the deck between us. I
could not read it upside down. I opened my leather coat, and with the
cold instantly biting into my chest, hauled out my notebook and pencil
and stretched them out to him. He shook his head and indicated that he
could not take both hands away from steering. So I buttoned up my coat
again in some perplexity.
Then, without abruptness, with a certain sickening majesty, the
aeroplane stood on its head and swooped down onto the surface of the
white sea below us. As it swallowed us we began to spiral rapidly
around as though we were tobogganing down a giant corkscrew. As we
went on down through this white nothingness I became very dizzy. The
propellers had slowed 'way down and I thought the engines had failed,
and that we were either falling 10,000 feet or making a forced descent.
But the pilot sat still back above me, so I did likewise.
Suddenly we spiralled violently down through the bottom of the cloud
into sight of the earth again. Instantaneously the engines broke into
their old roar and the aeroplane stopped pointing straight down and
assumed a steep slant. If any one ever heaved a sigh of relief I did it
then.
I felt the rapping behind me. Looking round, I saw the pilot pointing
down at the earth, ahead and to our right. I shook my head. Then, as we
careened downward, he stopped his motors for a fraction of a second,
and in the sudden deafening silence he shouted out, "The front!"
Here, if my hopes had materialized, I should be able to give a most
striking picture of a battle as seen from an aeroplane. But honesty
compels me to say that any one who wants to get a good clear view of
the front had much better go there on the surface of the earth, and not
through the air.
In the first place, it takes quite a little time and trouble to
discern the lines of opposing trenches even when you stand on a quiet
observation post with a General painstakingly pointing and explaining,
by the help of landmarks, just where they run. Here, though we were
now only 1,000 metres (about 3,300 feet) up, we were racing along the
front at 80 miles an hour, and all my friend the pilot could do was
to point here and there frantically. So among the maze of white lines
I saw running below me through the hazy atmosphere, some which I took
for trenches were undoubtedly roads; some which I took for roads were
equally undoubtedly trenches, while only a few, by their zigzagging,
could I unhesitatingly have guaranteed to have been trenches.
In the next place the roar of the engines totally drowned out all the
reports of the guns which were going off below us, and the explosions
of the shells, which are such a striking feature of the front.
To make matters still more undramatic there was no battle going on at
the precise moment when we shot downward out of the clouds, but only a
rather languid artillery exchange. Even a regulating aeroplane which
was sailing around directly below us and about half-way down between
us and the earth, correcting the fire of some batteries, was having an
exceptionally peaceful time of it. We could look down and see plainly
the red, white and blue circles of France painted on the tops of its
planes, but there were none of the customary woolly little white clouds
of German shrapnel bursting round it during the few seconds that it
remained in sight.
Furthermore, the guns right below it and us were so cleverly concealed
that they were quite invisible. The only signs of its being a front at
all were the bursting shells from the French batteries. These little
puffs of smoke in the hazy distance the pilot spotted unerringly, but
he had a discouraging time pointing them out to my unaccustomed eyes as
we raced along.
So this, I fear, is all that any one visiting the front by aeroplane
would have seen this afternoon. Possibly had we hung around longer we
might have seen more, but the pilot and I both had important dinner
engagements in Paris, and the sun was getting very low. We therefore
reluctantly swept around and, leaving the silver band of the Aisne
behind us, started for home.
We kept low, not over 1,000 metres, so that the landscape was very
clear and interesting. First we passed over the city of Compiègne,
where I had lunched with Dr. Carrel only three days before to the
accompaniment of an artillery obligato. Then right over the big,
dark green Forest of Compiègne where I tried but failed to locate a
château I had visited with Mme. Carrel. Then on and on over a further
entrancing exhibit of parti-colored carpet fitting together at the
edges as snugly as any completed picture-puzzle.
Before long we reached Senlis, where I had stopped on my way to
Compiègne the other day to take snap-shots of the streets of houses
gutted by the Germans during their brief occupation before the battle
of the Marne. Passing over Senlis, we dropped lower, so that I could
get a clear bird's-eye view of the havoc. Then on and on, without
incident, till the smoke of Paris came in sight, and on and on again,
till I looked down through a thousand yards or so of space on the
aviation field from which I had started just one hour and twenty-five
minutes earlier.
Suddenly the motors stopped, the aeroplane keeled over onto the tip
of its left wing and, pivoting round on it, we began our dizzy spiral
descent. First on one wing-tip, and then on the other, we corkscrewed
dizzily down. First the whole surface of the earth would swiftly fly
up, revolving as it came, and slap me on the left side of the face,
then, a fraction of a second later, the same revolving surface would
heave swiftly up to slap me on the right side of my face. This double
spiral descent is certainly by all odds the dizziest proceeding that
was ever devised by man.
Finally, with a swoop which I made sure would carry away most of the
chimney-pots of the suburb, we made a beautiful glide and alighted on
the grass of the aviation field as smoothly as a canoe launched from a
beach into a quiet lake.
Here one would think our day had ended, but there was one very vivid
thrill left.
As the aeroplane came to a stop a mechanic came running up, carrying
a pneumatic wheel. He spoke a few sharp words to the pilot, and the
latter asked me to get out quickly, saying that he would return
and explain some of the details of our flight a little later. So I
scrambled out, the machinist scrambled into my place, carrying the
pneumatic wheel, and with a rattle and a roar the aeroplane rolled
across the field and leaped into the air again.
I joined some aviation officers and asked what was the matter. They
pointed to a machine a few thousand feet above us, and explained that
in leaving the ground that machine had lost one of its pneumatic
wheels. The aviator was ignorant of this, and, unless warned in time,
would, on trying to make his landing, turn turtle and get killed. My
pilot had gone up to meet him in the upper air and by waving the wheel
at him indicate his predicament, so that he could land on the left
wheel and tail of his machine.
"Unless he understands before he lands he is a dead man," said the
officer. This really was a dramatic spectacle--the one aviator soaring
on guard high in the sky in complete unconsciousness of the death that
awaited him; the other, climbing nearer and nearer, then circling round
and round in narrowing circles. Finally, the first machine started down.
"He understands," said some one.
"No, he doesn't," said others.
"Get the ambulance ready," ordered the aviation Captain, and the engine
of the motor-ambulance began to chug with a most sinister effect.
We all stood perfectly powerless and watched the machine spiral down.
As he made his glide, men stood in the field waving spare wheels at
him to insure his understanding. But no. Instead of landing tilted
to the left on his sound wheel and tail, he made his landing leaning
over a little to the right where the wheel was missing. As it touched
the earth the great machine buried its nose in the ground, its tail
rose and rose till it stood perpendicular, and then fell forward in a
somersault, so that the plane was lying on its back.
"He's finished. Get the ambulance," ordered the Captain.
We all started at a run across the field toward the motionless
aeroplane, the motor-ambulance following close on our heels. As we
got to the wreck a figure crawled out and began to swear fluently at
not having been warned in a way that a sane man could understand. How
the aviator escaped will always remain a complete mystery. But his
escape made a happy climax to the thrilling ending of an unforgettable
afternoon.
II
HOW THE FRONT IS VISITED
When the average newspaper-reader reads the average war correspondent's
excellent stories from the firing-line, his ideas are probably vague
indeed as to how the correspondent reached that very elastic zone known
as "the front."
He probably pictures the military authorities extending to the writer
a magnificently sweeping invitation to witness and immortalize their
armies in battle. In his mind's eye he sees the journalist equipping
himself with automobile, shelter-tent, sleeping-bag, canned food,
medicine-chest and revolver--with everything, in fact, necessary
for the hardships and emergencies of campaigning. This visionary
correspondent then sallies forth from the luxury and security of Paris
(let us say), sitting by his chauffeur, military map in hand, directing
the course of his high-powered car to that section of the front where
the General Staff has informed him that a critical battle is to take
place. Arrived there, he watches an infantry charge capture the enemy's
trenches; then, leaping into his waiting motor, speeds away to another
portion of the line, which he reaches according to his schedule, just
in time to observe a particularly interesting bombardment of the
enemy's lines by a battery of heavy artillery. He is called away after
a time by the necessity of covering several miles more in order to
watch the defenders of a front trench repel an enemy attack. He may
lunch with a General, if he happens to drop in at headquarters just
as lunch is served, or he may have to share a soldier's frugal meal
in the darkness of a bomb-proof. After attending an aeroplane duel,
having a chat with the Generalissimo of the armies, inspecting the
consolidation of a few hundred yards of trenches just taken from the
enemy, watching the explosion of a mine, interviewing a fresh batch of
German prisoners, with whom a punctured tire almost causes him to miss
his appointment, and observing the methods employed by the Red Cross
in collecting the wounded under fire, he is overtaken by night after
a busy day, and sleeps in his shelter-tent before making up his mind
which particular army he will visit the following day.
It is a thrilling and romantic picture. But how sadly distant from the
truth.
The war correspondent does not buy himself a motor, because if he did
he would not be allowed to use it. All he buys himself is a railway
ticket. When it comes to motoring, he is packed with an assortment of
fellow-correspondents into military autos specially assigned by the
army authorities.
He does not buy a shelter-tent or a sleeping-bag, because at a certain
scheduled hour every evening the staff-officer who has him and his
colleagues in tow will lead him into an excellent hotel in some large
town or other and assign him to a comfortable bedroom engaged ahead. He
does not buy canned provisions, because before going to bed the officer
buys him an appetizing dinner, follows it up with a good breakfast the
next morning, and at lunch-time introduces him to a courteous General,
or, at a pinch, to another hotel-keeper, by one or the other of whom
he is supplied with a prearranged and excellent lunch.
He does not buy himself a medicine-chest, because he is always within
shouting distance of enough medical talent to treat a whole city.
He does not buy a revolver, because it would be gently but firmly taken
away from him if he did.
If he is sensible, he does not even buy himself binoculars, for the
officers by whom he will find himself uninterruptedly accompanied
will be glad to let him use theirs, and though he may not look so
picturesque without them, he will be much more comfortable if he has
any hands-and-knees work to do.
Finally, he will not have a word to say as to where he wants to go or
what he wants to see, for that has all been settled in advance.
It is true that different Generals vary greatly in the risks that they
will allow correspondents to run with their respective armies. Some
feel that if a correspondent wants to take chances that is his own
affair so long as he does not unduly endanger the life of a valuable
staff-officer along with his own. Others feel personally responsible
for the safeguarding of visitors, whether the visitor is willing to
take chances or not.
But these variations merely affect the more or less dangerous details
of the trip, not the programme as a whole, which is quite rigid.
In the beginning of the war a few men, like Alexander Powell in
Flanders, and Robert Dunn in the retreat from Mons, were actual
knights-errant of the pen and wandered or whirled where they pleased,
and saw what happened to come their way.
But on the western front, at least, that is all dead and gone.
The activities of war correspondents have been thoroughly regulated,
systematized, standardized. Just what the correspondent is to be
permitted to see at the front is deliberately considered and arranged
in advance. The authorities decide what fights are fit for him to see
just as painstakingly as chaperons used to decide what plays were
fit for débutantes to see. He, together with the six or eight other
journalists who are to make up the party, is placed in the hands of a
military duenna who guards his every move from the time the admirably
organized tour starts, until he is again safely delivered back in
Paris. The precise duration of the trip, the precise route to be taken,
the precise place at which each meal is to be eaten, the precise room
in the precise hotel in which each night is to be spent, the precise
General to be met and trench to be visited, are all inexorably fixed in
the schedule of the trip.
The only phenomena which the general staffs cannot predetermine are
the activities of the aviators and the course of the enemy's shells
and bullets. Hence, the only spontaneous adventures in store for
correspondents, which may come unexpectedly, at any moment, are the
whirring of aeroplanes overhead, their shelling and their duels and the
sudden passing or arrival of enemy projectiles, from tiny bullets up to
enormous "Jack Johnsons."
Even this element of surprise can be avoided in the case of a
small minority of visitors who I understand prefer to limit their
researches at "the front" to the hospitals, supply-trains, motor-repair
organizations, encampments of reserves, and similar objects of
interest, which lie some twenty kilometres behind the trenches and yet
really are sufficiently a part of the front to be known as its rear.
The front has a second category of visitors besides the war
correspondents of whom I have been writing--"the distinguished
strangers." These do not come to the front for the purpose of writing
about what they see, and are for this reason, as well as because of the
courtesy which it is desired to show them, allowed considerably more
latitude, although they, too, are kept religiously away from any part
of the lines where real trouble is expected.
I myself was fortunate enough to be invited to visit the French and
Belgian fronts in a sort of dual capacity. Having pledged myself not to
go on to Germany, and to write nothing about anything that was shown me
in confidence, I was given a special trip, instead of going with one of
the regular "journalists' parties," which certainly have an unromantic
resemblance to Cook's Tours. I was thus enabled to visit certain
advanced trenches where larger parties, in the nature of things, could
not go, and was shown things which had not previously been shown to
correspondents. But the organization of my trip resembled that of the
average correspondents' tour closely enough to enable me to describe
its details.
* * * * *
In Paris in a rather small room on the second floor of the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, at a methodically cluttered writing-table, on
which one of the oddly-shaped French telephones lapses into occasional
silence, sits a slender, suave, well-groomed Frenchman about forty
years old. He has a glossy dark moustache, large and pensive dark eyes,
a nicely deprecatory manner, and a beautifully conciliatory smile. He
chats to his visitor in excellent English, if English be required, and
smiles at him this almost tender smile. He is Monsieur P----, the war
correspondents' Czar. He is the absolute ruler of their destinies. For
it is he who picks and chooses among their waiting numbers, and decides
to which to accord the privilege of a place in one of the parties which
leave about every two weeks for a two- or three-day trip to the front.
When an eager newspaper man has come over all the way from California,
let us say, for such a trip, has waited in Paris a month or six
weeks for such a trip and has seen colleagues favored above other
men start off with enthusiasm and return with hauteur from such a
trip, the transcendent importance of Monsieur P---- in that craving
correspondent's eyes verges on the pitiful.
When you think of this hungry horde of newspaper men collected from the
ends of the earth on this one assignment, receiving curt cables and
telegrams every few days from their papers asking where their stories
are, all as suspicious and jealous of each other as prima-donnas, each
trying to "put over a beat" on the other, and each terrified lest some
other "put over a beat" on him, you can perhaps imagine that Monsieur
P----'s official duties do not constitute a sinecure.
Behind the back of Monsieur P---- they grouch; before his face they
grovel. They try on him all the arts and practices of their profession,
from bluff, through blandishments to supplication. And Monsieur P----
sits and smiles at them with tender sympathy and gives them their trips
fairly and squarely without fear or favoritism. The room echoes with
their pleas and protests, the telephone buzzes with their wheedlings
and reproaches; but Monsieur P---- deals out even-handed justice among
them and never turns a hair. There is probably not an hour of the day
or night that some war correspondent in any language from English to
Japanese is not calling down very horrible curses upon this autocrat's
head. And yet they all cherish for him the most sincere affection and
respect.
I myself was fortunate enough to be introduced to Monsieur P---- within
a couple of hours of reaching Paris, my special trip to the front
having already been arranged for the following morning. Its machinery
was the same as that of the regular trips. Monsieur P---- got out an
official printed form of military pass for war correspondents. My
photograph was pasted on its cover. I was asked to write my signature
on the next page, which was devoted to this trip. There were several
more pages for possible other trips. On this first page was written
the name of Epernay, the city behind the front to which I was to go
by train the following morning. It was specified that the trip was to
last three days. The name of the staff-officer who was to accompany me
was written in, and subsequently his signature was appended. The whole
thing was signed, stamped by Monsieur P---- and handed over to me to
carry with me on the trip, to be handed back to him immediately upon my
return, and to be used again should I later make other trips.
Then the staff-officer who was to be my chaperon came in and we were
introduced. In private life he happened to be a prince. In the army he
was at present plain Captain d'A----. Incidentally, he proved to be a
fine fellow and a very pleasant companion.
Following his instructions, I was at the railroad station the following
morning at eight o'clock, together with Lincoln Eyre, whom I had been
permitted to invite on the trip. I presented my military pass to the
ticket-seller, who scrutinized it closely before selling me a railway
ticket to Epernay. It is the rule in France that correspondents must
pay for their railway tickets themselves, so that the Government cannot
be accused of paying their way for propagandist purposes. After you
reach the front the military authorities furnish army motors, and
themselves take care of your meals and bedrooms.
On the train was one of the regular personally conducted
correspondents' caravans, consisting of about eight correspondents.
There were three Americans, a couple of Frenchmen, a couple of
Scandinavians, and, I think, a Russian. Their cicerone was a very
tall staff-officer who looked slightly worried by his cosmopolitan
responsibilities. Their party was going on to Verdun.
After a comfortable two-hour trip we got out at Epernay. There we were
met by Captain F----, a staff-officer belonging to the General Staff of
the 5th Army, which we were to visit. Thus Captain d'A----, from the
Staff of the Paris War Office, had general responsibility for the trip,
while Captain F----, who also was to accompany us, was responsible for
the detailed military arrangements during our stay with the 5th Army.
Captain d'A----'s orderly (who before mobilization had been the wealthy
young proprietor of a steamship line to South America) having taken
our bags to the hotel, where we were to return to spend the night, we
immediately started off on our schedule.
The ground plan of my three-day trip was planned to give me a condensed
view of all the component parts of a French army of five army corps, or
about 200,000 men, from the rear up to the front trench.
We accordingly began with the Motor Transport Repair Corps, situated in
Epernay, consisting of 1,000 men and 14 officers, including 3 doctors.
It kept in up-to-the-minute running order the 1,500 motor vehicles of
the army corps which occupied the front 20 miles before us.
The Captain who showed us around had been technical supervisor of the
Rochet-Schneider Auto Company and had, together with all the other
mechanical experts, been mobilized directly into the present work.
He answered my surprise at the number of soldiers employed in these
peaceful labors by explaining that two soldiers at work in the rear for
every three soldiers fighting was the regular formula.
Epernay, being the centre of the champagne industry, most of the
military repair garages had been located in the great wine storehouses.
It was odd to see soldiers repainting grim wire-cutting autos rubbing
elbows with peasant women busily wrapping gold-foil round the heads of
fat quarts of famous vintages.
"Yes, they work together," smiled the Captain; "and it is not so
incongruous as it looks. For the champagne was a good ally of ours
during the battle of the Marne. It made enough casualties among the
Boches to have an appreciable effect on the course of the battle. When
we chased them out of here the broken bottles looked as though there
were no more champagne left in the world. But as a matter of fact, so
enormous are the quantities stored hereabouts that the German inroads
were relatively slight."
It was remarkable how much we were able to crowd into an hour's
inspection. Great meat-lorries, each carrying enough fresh carcasses
to stock a city butcher-shop, secured ventilation yet guarded their
contents against flies by close-meshed steel netting instead of solid
sides. But to protect the meat from dust science had had to bow to
nature, for to the netting in its turn were attached pine boughs which
admitted air while excluding dust more efficiently than any artificial
contrivance. Enormous repair-lorries were each a perambulating garage
fully equipped with machinery for repairing broken parts or making new
ones. Some of these lorries ran on their own power. Others were towed
along by a big motor. In either case they made their own power to run
their repair machinery, and their own brilliant electric light by which
to work at night. They had almost hermetically sealed curtains to keep
the light from leaking out, for in mobile war they are often called
upon to do their work in sight and range of the enemy. But the trench
warfare has rooted them to the spot for a weary time.
"But wait!" said the Captain. "When the advance begins just watch us
keep up with the procession."
There were autos with a steel frame running from the radiator, overhead
to the back seat, this frame having razor-edged knife-blades attached.
In open warfare while scouting along strange roads these were useful in
shearing through any wires which the thoughtful foe might have strung
across for the decapitation of speeding visitors.
There were uninteresting-looking big gray ammunition-lorries,
ambulances, post-offices on wheels and hundreds of ordinary autos for
the use of officers, messengers, etc.
I was informed that the life of the average car in active service was
very far from being as short as was popularly supposed. "Why," said the
Captain, "we have many cars coming in which have been working hard for
eleven months, and now for the first time are compelled to come in for
repairs."
I noticed with what fastidious care all the cars were painted and
varnished. "Yes, that is the way we apply psychology to motor-repair
work," chuckled the Captain. "Experience has taught us that when a
soldier is given a beautifully finished car to run he takes pride in
it. And he not only keeps the outside well cleaned, which greatly
postpones the date when it must come back to us for doctoring, but he
also bestows much more care on his motor. So it is not only æstheticism
which prompts that beautiful finish. But talk about æstheticism, here
is a real example of it."
He showed me a car from whose front lamp-brackets some artist had
wrought in iron two very beautiful palm fronds.
"The man sacrificed much leisure time to making those branches from
sheer love of his art and of the beautiful. The French people are like
that, Monsieur."
Having eaten a sample of the good bread and most excellent Irish stew
which constitutes the soldiers' lunch, we returned to the hotel for our
own early lunch. Then I climbed into one military motor with Captain
F----, while Eyre installed himself in another with Captain d'A----,
and at about 12.30 we started off for the front of "the front."
We climbed rapidly out of Epernay, up a long very steep grade, flanked
as far as the eye could reach by vineyards, in which peasant women, old
men and boys were busily harvesting the raw material for future "Secs,"
"Extra drys," and "Bruts." Our bellowing military motor-siren drove
most of the heavy two-wheeled peasant's carts hastily toward the gutter
to give us passage. Every now and then some cart's fantastic creakings
would drown our clamor, and then as we finally forced our way past, the
soldier-chauffeur would launch some terse but terrific imprecations
at the driver. At the end of the ascent we cut loose along the broad
turnpike which ran through a forest across the top of a wide plateau.
Sprinkled all along the highway were uniformed "territorials" working
at road repair.
[Illustration: Page 30
"THERE WERE AUTOS WITH ... RAZOR-EDGED KNIFE-BLADES ATTACHED"]
[Illustration: Page 32
CAPTAIN D'A---- AND THE AUTHOR. (STARTING FOR THE FRONT FROM THE
FRONT OF THE HOTEL AT EPERNAY)]
"It is of extreme military importance to keep all these lines of
communication in first-class condition," explained Captain F----. "It
is not so romantic to mend a road as to mend a trench, but it is just
as necessary."
By rights we ought now to have started our routine of courtesies
by calling on General Franchet d'Esperey, commanding the 5th Army,
the first of whose five army corps we were about to visit. For the
amenities of a trip to the front require that in theory the stranger
should pay his prearranged respects to all those in command from the
General of the Army, through the General of the Army Corps, down
through the General of Division, to the Colonel of the Regiment he
happens to be visiting. And practise in this matter sticks uncommonly
close to theory. Charming though it is to meet these courteous, highly
intelligent and often illustrious men, it is impossible not to feel
that the amount of time devoted to such visits of ceremony is quite
out of proportion to the very limited time allowed the average visitor
to the front. It is not the actual ten or fifteen minutes spent in
conversation with these hospitable gentlemen which eats up the time,
but the fact that meetings with some of the busiest men in the world
are necessarily definite appointments which must be very punctually
kept. And four or five such appointments in the course of a day at
places scores of miles apart necessarily tear that day to pieces.
However, General Franchet d'Esperey had suddenly been called out to an
inspection of a certain part of the front, so we skipped the engagement
which had been made with him, and motored on to call on the General in
command of the Army Corps with which we found ourselves. In the _salon_
of a small château we were introduced, and conversed pleasantly for a
few minutes. Then he assigned one of his staff-officers to accompany us
to an observation point on the edge of the plateau from which he could
give us a sweeping view of many miles of the front, and point out the
interesting topographical features and the course of the trenches.
I was thus simultaneously accompanied by Captain d'A----, the
staff-officer from the Paris War Office, by Captain F----, the
staff-officer from the 5th Army, and by the staff-officer of the Army
Corps.
Having explained to us the "lay of the land" and incidentally pointed
out to us the sizable crater of a shell which a few days earlier had
come within twenty yards of putting a definite end to this particular
observation point, the last officer bade us good-bye. We climbed back
into our motors, and made the steep, winding descent from the plateau,
and raced over the long, straight road so well known to motor tourists
of peaceful days, which leads to where in the distance the low roofs
of Rheims can be seen, like some muddy tide washing the foot of the
craglike cathedral. In Rheims, which the enemy had considerately
stopped shelling an hour or so before our arrival, we had to go to
the headquarters of the Colonel in Command. He was out, but had left
a Major with instructions to show us to X----, a village about a
kilometre from the outskirts of Rheims and immediately touching on
the front trenches. We left our motors near the edge of the city and
walked to where down the street ran a deep narrow ditch lying open,
waiting for its sewer-pipes. "Climb in," said the Major. "Here's where
the communicating trench begins." In we climbed and were led by the
Major along a zigzag kilometre of trench until, fifteen minutes later,
we climbed out again in the main street of X----. There the Major
introduced us to the Captain at the moment in command of the battalion
occupying the village. He became our guide through the rest of the
afternoon, which we spent in the front trenches, and which is described
in the following chapter.
Thus the War Department from Paris had notified the General Staff of
the 5th Army that I was to make a three-day visit to that army. That
General Staff had arranged a complete programme and had notified the
staffs of the various Army Corps which I was to visit. The first of
these Army Corps Staffs had decided that I was to visit the front
before Rheims, and had so notified the Colonel. The Colonel had decided
which particular portion of the front I was to visit before Rheims and
had so notified the Captain. And the Captain in turn had made up his
mind which specific trenches I was to visit, and conducted me through
them.
Thus far my programme had been more interesting but just as rigid as
that of any of the correspondents' tours.
At the end of the afternoon in the trenches a minor example arose of
the advantages which my special trip conferred.
As we returned to our motors in the outskirts of Rheims, I told d'A----
how keenly I wished to see the Rheims Cathedral.
"It is not on the programme," he answered; "but if you want to see
it you certainly shall. It will get you back to Epernay pretty late,
instead of at the hour arranged for, but that will not matter."
So we rolled through the streets of Rheims, where of the 110,000
original population 20,000 still live and carry on their daily life.
The greater part of the city showed no signs whatever of the constantly
repeated bombardments which it has sustained, save for the blocks
on blocks of houses closed and with windows boarded up. But when we
entered that portion lying to the east of the cathedral and toward the
enemy, we passed through the fleshless skeleton of a city. The house
walls generally stood intact, but through the gaping windows one could
see the nothingness that lay behind, where great shells had plunged
downward through the roof, sweeping the whole interior, floor by floor,
down into the cellar; or where smaller shells had gutted the interior
by fire. Every now and then we would see a street completely blocked
by a great barrier of rubble, where a whole house had been plucked
out bodily from between its neighbors by some monstrous explosion and
smashed to pieces on the pavement as you would smash an egg on the
ground.
Then we came out into the great square before the cathedral, and looked
up at its cliff-like façade.
I heaved a sigh of relief. I seemed to be looking at the same
incredible beauty that I had looked at just over a year ago, when the
world was still at peace. It is true that half the great rose window
was empty of glass; that here and there stood statues headless or with
chipped and mutilated limbs. But in the vast profusion of carvings on
the façade these were almost lost. Gradually, however, the full tragedy
bore in on me.
Have you ever seen an exquisite cameo face congested by drunkenness
or disease so that it remains but a blurred and subtly bloated
semblance of its former loveliness? If you have, you will know what
has befallen the façade at Rheims. It stood away from the German guns
so that not a shell hit it. But Fate and inefficiency left it covered
with scaffolding which caught fire, and the towering blaze licked
and licked so furiously at every sculptured angle, line and curve
that in a few hours all those keenly chiselled outlines which the
centuries themselves had only faintly mellowed, became flabby, blunt
and indeterminate. One used at times to gaze at the façade through
half-closed lids, so that no exquisite detail should distract from
the swimming, hazy glory of the whole. That glory it still possesses,
but to those who knew it in its earlier unmarred splendor it seems to
stand, straining aloft, in patient martyrdom. A heavy barricade, built
at a distance of some twenty yards, prevented entrance or even a close
approach. As we stood counting the shrapnel scars on the horse of
Jeanne d'Arc, which ended the myth that this statue had come through
the whole bombardment miraculously untouched, a little girl approached
with a basket full of pieces of colored glass. These she offered for
sale as fragments of the priceless stained glass of the cathedral.
It required no expert to see that they were pitifully spurious. Thus
huckstering makes pennies out of tragedy.
We departed silently, and leaving Captain F---- to return to his
headquarters for the night, we were quickly speeding through the
twilight on our way back to Epernay.
III
IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES
WITH THE 5TH FRENCH ARMY, _Aug. 3_ (_via Paris_).
On the anniversary of the last day of the world's peace, the 365th day
of the war, I stood in the darkness of a very advanced front trench.
A short section where I stood was roofed and bomb-proofed. Through
a row of very narrow rifle-slits came little beams of daylight that
rested in flecks on the white, chalky back of the trenches and were
thrown up very faintly against the logs of the trench roof.
Very dimly, I could gradually make out a narrow plank standing-platform
running along below the slits. A card was tacked to the wooden frame
of each opening, bearing the name of the particular soldier to whom
that opening belonged. Above each slit hung (or could hang) its owner's
rifle in slings from the roof.
Every few yards, set in little recesses dug out from the back of the
trench, stood fat bottles. They contained chemicals with which to soak
the soldiers' mouth-coverings if attacked by poisoned gas.
The trench was nearly empty of men. But at the loophole nearest me
stood the rigid figure of a soldier. His legs were invisible in the
darkness. His body showed up vaguely. His face was brilliantly lighted
by the thin blade of light through the rifle-slit. He stood silent and
motionless, his eyes intently focussed out into the sunlight.
I looked through the next slit, through a spider's web of barbed wire,
between stunted black posts, across two hundred yards of green grass
and wild flowers, at another tangle of posts and barbed wire with a
narrow furrow of white chalky soil running along just behind it--the
German trenches.
Not a living thing was in sight in the sunny loneliness. There was
silence except for the crack, crack, crack of striking bullets from
inaudible German rifles. I looked back at the face of the "guetteur,"
the watcher. His eyes, fixed on the narrow white line, were puckered
with intentness, but his lips were parted in an easy, good-humored
smile, brightening a face young, clean-cut, alert, calm and very
patient.
He seemed to symbolize the spirit of the new France, the France of
endurance, of determination, of buoyancy, of patience, the stoic France
that can keep silent and motionless, the France that can stand in the
darkness undismayed, watching and waiting till the moment comes to leap
up and out into the light.
Early that morning, from the window of a château on the edge of a
high plateau, a young staff-officer had shown me the great plain of
Champagne stretching away to the low hills on the horizon. Miles away
lay Rheims, made to seem squatty by the cathedral which towered in its
midst.