days ago an officer of explosives brought a Colonel to see one of
these demonstrations in another school, behind a different part of the
line. As they came to the entrance of the trench the officer politely
made way for the Colonel to enter the trench first. As the Colonel did
so, the bomb exploded prematurely and killed the Colonel outright.
About twenty yards in front of the trench was dug a shallow dummy
trench to represent a German target. Some 150 yards further distant was
set up a section of wire entanglements.
We found the 128 soldiers ranged in line a few yards behind the trench.
At its edge I took my place with the Captain of explosives and three or
four other officers. The infantrymen lined up two deep behind us.
In the open recess in the trench stood the non-commissioned officer
of engineers, facing backward toward us. He was the instructor. At
the order of the Captain he placed an innocent-looking satchel on the
trench edge at his right elbow, plunged a hand into it and briskly
plucked out, one after the other, eight different varieties of bombs.
Picking them up, one at a time, he gave a terse lecture on the
construction and method of operation of each.
The bombs were all fully loaded, and the explosion of any one of them
would have sent a great many of us well on the way to the cemetery. I
noticed in some of the officers, and undoubtedly in myself, a certain
tenseness as the engineer nonchalantly illustrated within an inch or
two of actuality how a percussion bomb would explode if brought in
contact with the ground.
In demonstrating the first grenade he adjusted around his wrist a loop
with about eight inches of cord hanging from it. A heavy two-inch metal
pin was attached to the end of the cord. Picking up a black spherical
bomb slightly bigger than a baseball, he stuck the pin lightly into a
hole in its side. The bomb was to be thrown with full force. In flying
out of the hand it pulled itself free from the pin, causing a friction
which ignited the five-second fuse. The pin of course remained behind,
hanging to the cord, and was promptly stuck into another bomb. This
bomb, being particularly heavy, could be thrown only fifteen metres by
an average thrower and twenty as a maximum.
The second bomb was black and pear-shaped. It had a spring which
looked like a nickel shoe-horn folded back tight against it. The
pressure of the palm against the shoe-horn in throwing it released the
spring and started the fuse, which, like all the rest, was set at five
seconds.
The third bomb was a can of white tin attached by two wires to a white
deal handle. A nail was stuck into a hole in the can. The nail was
hammered in by a sharp rap against the ground. ("If you try to knock
it in against the palm of your hand it would hurt," explained our
instructor.) The nail, driven in, started the fuse.
In the demonstration of this particular bomb our mentor was quite
peculiarly realistic, bringing it violently down to within what seemed
like the fraction of an inch of the ground.
The fourth bomb was black and round and was started by scratching the
tip of a stiffly projecting bit of ignitible fuse against a black band
of raspy material worn round the thumb of the left hand. The fifth bomb
was lighted in a very similar manner against the side of an ordinary
safety-match box. These five were regular grenades.
The sixth and seventh were incendiary grenades to set fire to wooden
obstructions, etc. The one, in exploding, scattered the burning liquid
to a distance of a few yards, the other set fire only to the spot where
it burst. These were both large spherical bombs. Before being thrown
kerosene was poured into them through a little bunghole, which was then
stopped up.
The eighth was an asphyxiating bomb. I cannot, however, be too careful
in emphasizing the fact that this so-called "asphyxiating" bomb was not
poisonous, like the German asphyxiating gases, but merely irritated the
eyes, nostrils and throat, so that when thrown into a German bomb-proof
it would force out the occupants. It left no ill after-effects.
Besides these there were two aerial torpedoes. One was shot out of an
old-fashioned little mortar propelled by black powder. The other was
bigger and more powerful, had a fin tail to keep its flight accurate
and was fired out of a complicated little gun. As both this torpedo
and its gun are new inventions, I am not permitted to give any closer
details concerning them.
The Sergeant of engineers having completed his little lecture, with
himself and his class still in this world, the soldiers and officers
all withdrew to the end of the field, some 200 yards behind the trench,
and there lay down on their stomachs. I got into the trench with the
engineer, placing myself to his left in front of the entrance to the
bomb-proof, and the demonstration in the gentle art of grenade-throwing
began. He took bomb number one, stuck the pin at the end of the cord
firmly into the hole, swung his arm back and let fly.
Having seen the departure of the bomb, I ungracefully tumbled into the
bomb-proof, with the engineer a close second. Once there, there was an
appreciable pause. Then came an explosion, the violence of which really
astonished me. I could distinctly feel the ground shake.
After giving the fragments which had been hurled our way plenty of
time to come down on the roof, we stepped out into the trench again.
The engineer next picked up bomb number three with the deal handle,
hammered the nail home with one sharp rap against the edge of the
trench and sent the grenade hurtling through the air.
The mechanism of the first bomb had not been put in operation until the
bomb started on its flight. But the fuse of this third bomb started
burning the instant he hammered the nail in, and was burning while he
was whirling his arm preparatory to letting it fly. As it thus got a
running start on us, we had only barely time to get under cover before
the explosion took place.
Next came bomb number four. The demonstrator adjusted the black band
round his left thumb, took the bomb in his right hand and gave it a
scratch.
He evidently had some doubts as to whether the first scratch had
lighted the fuse, because after glancing at it he proceeded to give it
a second scratch before throwing it.
I need hardly say that I had already made home base in the bomb-proof
and was perfectly satisfied to watch from there his second effort to
get a light, which was crowned with complete success.
After watching the way these three bombs were started and thrown I
now wanted to watch the rest of them explode. So after considerable
discussion between the staff-officer who had me in charge and the
officer of explosives as to just how much danger there was in the
operation, we moved out of the trench up to the top of a little rise
about fifty yards to the right, where we ensconced ourselves in some
bushes. The soldiers were all kept at their original distances of 200
yards behind the trench.
From my new position I got an excellent view of the engineer whirling
his arm and letting fly; of the heavy black objects rushing through the
air; of the accuracy with which they hit the dummy trench; of the lazy
manner in which they rolled only two or three feet along the ground
before coming to rest, and of the treacherous inertia with which each
lay apparently as dead and cold as a piece of coal dropped by some
passing coal-cart, while the second of time which possibly elapsed
seemed like a minute at the least. Then came an amazingly instantaneous
burst of lead-colored smoke covering a circle some forty yards in
diameter, accompanied by an explosion of surprising violence. I could
see no flash of fire at all.
Next came the new aerial torpedo fired from the new gun. (The old
little mortar with the black powder was not used.) The new gun made
practically no report in discharging the torpedo. It was beautiful
to watch the slender fishlike projectile go sailing in a high and
graceful arc up, up, up, against the sky and then down, down, down,
until it landed just beyond the wire entanglements. But it really never
did land, for it had a percussion device in its nose which exploded it
on touching ground. This big torpedo had a reduced charge of explosive
so as not to destroy too much of the field. Judging by the report of
this reduced charge, the full charge going off must be the grandfather
of all explosions.
Next came the two incendiary bombs. One of these burst on contact,
setting fire to the patch of grass where it landed. The other had a
fuse which shot out a stream of golden sparks like fireworks before
exploding. This bomb threw burning liquid in all directions, setting
many fires in the grass for a radius of several yards.
Last came the asphyxiating bomb. It consisted of a sphere formed by
five pieces of perforated iron held loosely together in a sort of
disjointed shell by a little wire basket. Inside this openwork ball
hung a small glass vessel full of acid. When the engineer threw the
ball against the ground the five pieces of metal shell collapsed onto
the glass, breaking it and liberating the acid, which made a wet
splash on the ground. This acid in turn makes a gas which the French
somewhat euphemistically call "gas timide."
To show that this gas was not poisonous, like the German gases, we were
invited to stand in a close circle right around the fragments of the
bomb immediately after it had been thrown, with our heads bent over. We
stood and stood, sniffing away, but could detect no gas of any kind.
"Ah," said the officer of explosives, "in the full open air like this
our 'gas timide' takes longer to be noticed, but in an inclosed space
it works very rapidly."
Hardly had he finished speaking when I began to notice a smell
something like wood alcohol. At the same time my eyes began to stream
with tears, my nose felt as though it was indulging in one long
continuous sneeze, and I turned hastily away, coughing and sputtering
and wiping my eyes, with an officer on each side keeping me active
company.
"If that's a 'timide' gas," I remarked to one of the officers as we
left the pupils to begin actual practice, "I'd hate to meet a fierce
one."
VI
WITH THE BELGIAN BATTERIES
HEADQUARTERS OF THE BELGIAN ARMY,
LA PANNE, BELGIUM, _Aug. 30_.
Yesterday I spent a day with the Belgian artillery. In the morning at
ten o'clock Commandant L----, who had me in charge, called for me at
the very comfortable seaside hotel where I am staying. In his military
motor we threaded our way through the streets of the town. These were
jammed with thousands of Belgian soldiers enjoying their six days of
rest before returning for three days in the front trenches (followed
by six days in reserve and three days again in the front trenches).
A cheerful, well-fed-looking lot of men they are, not smart, but
husky-looking in their new khaki uniforms and greatcoats.
"Alas!" an infantry Captain yesterday complained to me, "they are fine
soldiers and have good uniforms, but we cannot get the men to look
'chic' in them like the British. Just look at those caps! They've
pulled them and twisted them about to suit their ideas! Those caps a
few days ago were 'chic' caps! And now, mon Dieu! look at them!"
However, I confess I was not much interested in whether these
privates were Belgian Beau Brummels or not. I had come to Flanders
not to inspect them on parade, but to watch them work on the firing
line. There I found them scrupulously clean, very patient and wholly
courageous, attributes which are more important than creased trousers,
unwrinkled jackets and well-blocked caps.
Once free from La Panne, our motor made good time along the country
road till we reached Furnes. There we stopped to take some photographs
of the beautiful old Hôtel de Ville which the German shells that drop
in from time to time have left practically undamaged.
From Furnes on we took the straight road to Ypres. The road was
for a time quite congested with ammunition-wagons, ambulances,
supply-lorries, etc. On our left we passed an encampment of
mitrailleuse dog-teams; on our right a park of British armored
motor-cannon.
We passed, too, long lines of trolley-cars packed with cheerful
soldiers being brought back from the front for their period of rest,
and with others going out to take their places. Thus the humble
street-car has taken its place in the machinery of war.
Soon we turned into another road which led us to the village of
Lampernisse. Here we visited and photographed the ruins of the church.
Not very long ago the Germans dropped a big shell into this church and
killed forty-two chasseurs who were sleeping in it. They are buried in
the graveyard in one big grave. Subsequently the Germans, believing
that the steeple of the church was being used for observation purposes,
kept on shelling it till they brought it all down, and incidentally
wrecked what remained of the village.
From here on our movements must be shrouded in mystery, but ultimately
at about 11.45 we reached a humble group of farm buildings, the
headquarters of Colonel D----, commanding the artillery of the sector.
We found him in a little bomb-proof telephone central built onto one
of the farm buildings. With a Major and a Captain he was poring over
very large scale maps spread on a table. Behind him a soldier sat at
a telephone switchboard. From the outside a whole sheaf of telephone
wires ran away, in various directions.
My Commandant presented me to the Colonel and explained my desire to
see some howitzers in action.
"Perfect!" exclaimed the Colonel genially. "We have just definitely
located a German blockhouse in their defense system and at two
o'clock this afternoon we are going to destroy it with one of our
150-millimetre howitzers. So if you will honor the Villa Beausejour
with your company at lunch you can afterward watch the howitzer work."
The old farm-house had been euphemistically christened the Villa
Beausejour by the Colonel's staff.
Inviting me into the bomb-proof, the Colonel then showed me on one of
the large scale maps the whole lay of the land. Red lines indicated the
Belgian intrenchments, blue lines the German. In the same way all over
the map behind the red line the Belgian batteries were indicated in
red, while the same held good in blue of those German batteries which
the Belgians had managed to locate. Some of these latter were false
emplacements. It was only when a little blue cannon was drawn behind
the emplacement that an actual gun was indicated.
The Colonel pointed out to me on this map the exact location of the
Villa Beausejour, of the blockhouse which was to be destroyed, and of
the gun which was to destroy it. He also showed me photographs of the
German positions taken from Belgian aeroplanes. Taking one of these
photographs and comparing it with a map, he explained to me how the map
showed only one road leading to a certain spot, while the photograph
showed a new second road leading to the same spot. This indicated the
existence of a concealed battery at that place.
The telephone bell rang. "This is Number 12," answered the
soldier-operator. He listened for a few moments and then told the
Colonel that Headquarters wished him to send over an officer after
lunch to cross-question the two German prisoners just captured for
information which might be of use to his artillery.
"Tell them I shall do so," replied the Colonel.
As we had another half-hour before lunch, he deputed one of his
officers to take me to a battery of 75's not far off and incidentally
show me some of the shell-holes made in the neighborhood by the German
"marmites," as the French and Belgians call the big high-explosive
shells.
A brisk walk brought us to the 75's, cleverly concealed in an
artificial wood which had been transplanted bodily. The Captain in
Command showed me the guns, and also a fine bomb-proof shelter which
he had just completed. It was very much needed, as, in spite of the
artificial woods, the Germans had roughly located his battery, and
whenever any Belgian 75's in his neighborhood open up on the enemy they
immediately cut loose on his battery. The whole surface of the fields
for hundreds of yards around was pockmarked with shell-holes.
He showed me one of his guns where a curious thing had happened. A
couple of days before a German shell had hit obliquely the steel
shield of this gun and had glanced off through the left wheel,
knocking the spokes out on its way. The shell had then entered the
ammunition-caisson standing next to the gun, had there burst, hurling
the heavy caisson bodily through the air to where its wreck landed
upside down, and had not exploded its contents of shells.
[Illustration: Page 101
"COLONEL D----, COMMANDING THE ARTILLERY OF THE SECTOR"]
[Illustration: Page 105
THE AUTHOR IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHELL-PITS, WHICH WERE TEN FEET
DEEP AND TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER]
After taking photographs of some of the biggest shell-pits, which were
some ten feet deep and twenty feet in diameter, we returned to the
Villa Beausejour and lunch. We sat down fourteen to lunch--the Colonel,
ten artillery officers, the Chaplain, my Commandant and I.
Lunch consisted of potato soup, paté de foie gras, vegetables,
strawberry-jam pie, cheese and coffee. There was no wine to start with,
but one of the officers soon came in with two bottles of white wine,
which we all mixed with our mineral-water.
The talk ran mostly on the two German prisoners.
"I certainly hope we shall be able to find out from them just where
that battery is that has been giving us all this trouble lately,"
exclaimed one officer.
"And those howitzers that I can't locate," from another.
"And where that body of troops to the right sleeps," from a third.
"Perhaps they'll know in which of those farms the German headquarters
are," from a fourth.
It appeared that the prisoners were from German Poland. When the
Belgian artillery had the day before driven the German troops into
their bomb-proofs these two had seized the opportunity to crawl forward
out of the trench, through the wire entanglements, across the open to
a Belgian advanced listening-post, where they had surrendered. They
were now at General Headquarters and had already given much valuable
information, including the unusually large number of men who slept
during the daytime in the blockhouse, and the presence in a certain
farm of a number of German officers.
A Captain of a battery of 75's who sat near me at lunch, was going to
tackle the farm-house that afternoon with his guns. The Captain in
command of my howitzers was not at lunch, as he was already on his
way to his observation-post, situated at the extreme front, within
270 yards of the blockhouse. From there he was going to correct the
howitzer fire, over some four kilometres of telephone line connecting
his observation-post with his guns.
A good deal of the talk at lunch was devoted to anathematizing a
certain general-staff officer who had charge of the uniforming of the
army and, apparently, was bent on changing the new khaki caps of the
officers from the British shape, which they all liked, to the French
shape.
A good story was told to illustrate the amazing efficiency of the
German intelligence department. One day when the army was being
reuniformed in khaki, a certain regiment of chasseurs was ordered to
leave their trenches right after dark that night to march to the rear
for the purpose of having their new uniforms issued to them. An hour or
two after they had received this order the Germans right opposite them
hoisted a great placard above their trenches. On it was sign-painted:
"Good-bye, brave chasseurs! Run along to get your new uniforms at
seventeen francs fifty apiece!"
Lunch being finished, my Commandant and I said good-bye all round and,
with detailed directions, started on a half-hour's walk to find the
howitzer battery. The Chaplain, in khaki, with an old black umbrella
and a long fishing-pole, came along as far as the first canal. There,
standing on a flat bit of embankment between two shell-holes, he
placidly began to fish.
The artillery, which had been booming in a desultory way all morning,
had of course stopped during the lunch-hour. For the artillerymen on
both sides certainly keep union rules in laying off when the time for
the dinner-pail comes round. If the noon whistle blew they could not be
more punctual in dropping work.
Now, however, the noon-hour was over and the guns again began to take
up their monotonous bass drumming. For a full half-hour we walked,
first along a deserted wagon-road, then to the left, along a path by
the bank of a canal, past an artificial hedge here and an artificial
grove of trees there. Some of these had batteries ambushed in them,
others were shams to divert the attention of the German aviators and
the fire of the German artillery from the real emplacements.
Finally, we came to a tall false hedge made of withered saplings
wired together. In the lee of this hedge was a low flat roof, perhaps
three feet above the surface of the ground, covered with a sprinkling
of earth and boughs. Under this we climbed down into a cellar-like
excavation about three feet deep, giving six feet of head room.
Here I first made the acquaintance of Julia. I found her standing with
her back to me under the plank shelter, with only her exceedingly short
and retroussé nose sniffling up at the leaden patch of threatening sky
which showed between the forward edge of the roof and the top of the
high false hedge in front. No one could well call Julia beautiful, but
there was power in every line and curve of her. She was a particularly
short-muzzled 150-millimetre heavy field-howitzer, and she had been
christened Julia in chalk letters across the back of her thick steel
shield by the members of her devoted crew.
On her breech were engraved a crown and a big "C. I.," for she and
her three sisters had been intended for Carol I., King of Roumania,
before they were bought up by the Belgian Government. One of the four
had exploded through trying to fire a 155-millimetre shell through her
150-millimetre bore, but the other three were doing fine work for their
adopted country. On my way to my appointment with Julia, we had passed
one of her sisters, called "Zoe," cowering up against the wall of a
very disreputable old farm-house, hiding her humiliation in a hole in
the ground under a plank roofing and a false hedge much like Julia's.
Any one who thinks that nowadays he will see artillery ranged in
imposing array, is doomed to disappointment. The artillery commander
(especially of the heavier guns) goes around the countryside stealthily
hiding one piece here, surreptitiously slipping another in there,
always selecting the most separate and inconspicuous locations, much as
a woman will wander around a hotel room stowing her pieces of jewelry
here and there where the burglars will never think of looking for them.
Only the burglars in the present case are hostile shells that make
holes ten feet deep and twenty feet across.
Julia's crew consisted of a Lieutenant and eight men. The Lieutenant
and seven of the men were grouped around the breech of the gun when
I arrived. The eighth man squatted to the left by a field-telephone
with the receiver held to his ear. Commandant L---- introduced me
to the Lieutenant, and then asked whether his Captain had reached
the observation-post. The Lieutenant had not heard from him yet, but
imagined he must get there any moment.
It began to rain hard, much to the vexation of the Commandant, who
feared it would hide the blockhouse from the observer and put an end to
the bombardment.
"Oh! no," said the Lieutenant; "he's only 270 yards distant from it.
He'll be able to see it all right."
On the board floor to the left, between the telephone and the front
wall of the excavation, were piled twenty-five or thirty wicked-looking
150-millimetre high-explosive shells. They were conical in shape, about
2-1/2 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, made of steel, with a copper
band around them near the base, and a copper nose.
I started to lift one of them, and only succeeded at the second
attempt. They weighed about 110 pounds apiece.