INTO THE TRENCHES
There comes a day when our sons cease to be soldiers in training and
become fighting men. It is a day looked forward to with dread by those
at home, with eager enthusiasm by the soldiers. I have seldom met a
soldier who had not something uncomplimentary to say of the powers for
not sending him more promptly to the front. The weeks spent in rest
billets, that is, the training camps, seem endless to the men. Every
move forward is hailed with joy. But progress from one village to the
next is exasperatingly slow, especially after they reach a point where
the rumble of guns, like distant thunder, is heard.
I can answer for it that those distant guns do not terrify anybody.
I have listened to them, and I had the same impulse to push on, on,
nearer, which besets the men. There is a real intoxication in the
sound. It intrigues you, fills you with a kind of savage curiosity, a
desire to send back to that challenge a Gargantuan defiance. At this
stage of the soldier’s career I know that he thoroughly enjoys himself.
I have been that far with the American army myself and I can testify
that everybody had a good time.
Shortly after our men took over their first sector on what is known as
the Toul front, I was privileged to travel for several days directly
behind this front in an army motor-car. The Toul sector was a part of
the French front in a northeastern corner of the country drained by two
historic rivers, the Meuse and the Moselle. Toul itself is an ancient
walled town with a magnificent cathedral and a moat still in working
order. Some sixty kilometers, or less than thirty-eight miles to the
northeast, lies immortal Verdun, and eastward almost in a straight line
is Nancy, the lovely capital of old Lorraine. Nancy is so close to the
German lines that it has been bombed and raided many times. When I saw
it the people were spending much of their time in bomb-proof cellars
constructed for their protection by the municipality.
How tenaciously the French cling to their homes was evident long before
I reached Nancy. Spring was in the air in spite of cold wind and a wet
clinging snow that fell and dripped through three or four disagreeable
days. The fields surrounding the low villages had been freshly plowed,
and here and there we saw gnarled peasants, old men and women, who
stolidly dug and harrowed, just as their grandparents did when
Frederick “the Great” raided the border near these very farms. Just as
their ancestors did during ceaseless wars of old.
Straight and white for miles ran the ribboned highroads between their
avenues of tall poplars. But as we progressed farther north, the roads
began to be cut up with great holes worn by heavy war trucks and gun
carriages. Fields to the right and left put on a strange and sinister
dress. Here were no peasants plowing, for those fields blossomed with
a harvest of barbed wire entanglements, mazes of barbed wire so wound
and woven, so thick and strong that only repeated shellings by heavy
artillery could level them. To me they looked like some devilish parody
of the rich vineyards I had seen only recently terracing the hills of
southern France.
A little farther on the fields were lined and crossed not only with
barbed wire but with trenches, neatly dug and lined with a basketwork
of willow withes. These trenches so far behind the lines amazed me.
“Surely the Germans could not get as far as this,” I protested.
“Probably not,” said the officer who was our escort, “but we are not
taking any chances. Suppose our men were forced to retreat fighting.
Well, here are rear defenses all ready for them.”
My son being at that moment in Toul, waiting to go forward, I
conceived a positive affection for those trenches, and the barbed wire
entanglements began suddenly to look benevolent.
Our motor-car was no longer alone on the long highroad leading
northward. We traveled now in company with many olive drab motor-trucks
and ambulances, all with U. S. A. and a string of identity numbers
painted in white letters on the sides. We passed many mule teams, the
melancholy mules wearing around their necks the grotesque gas mask
which is a part of their harness over there. Groups of foot soldiers,
some French but mostly American, hailed us as we passed. Others we saw
alongside of the road digging and draining. The road, built high above
the surrounding fields, was hard and dry, but the country was a bog of
mud and water.
Our objective was a village, too small to deserve a name on any but a
war map. It is important because it was the distributing point along
this particular sector, for American troops and army supplies. It is
about the last village up the line where one may safely venture without
a gas mask. The road leading to the village, and the main street when
we turned into it, were choked with motor-trucks, cars, ambulances,
mules and men, thousands of men, in brown uniforms and steel helmets.
As we wormed our way through this maze of heavy traffic, and as I
stepped out of the car into mud a foot deep, I had a remarkable mental
experience. My imagination suddenly switched back to a warm November
day in New York. I stood on a corner of Fifth Avenue and watched, with
half a million others, a regiment of drafted men starting for training
camp on Long Island. New York was giving the men a great farewell,
bands, flags, cheers, and from the marble balcony of the Union Club
a reviewing party of distinguished men, some of them veterans of the
Civil War.
The marching men were a pretty weedy and ill-conditioned lot, city
bred, most of them, indoor workers looking less than their average of
twenty-three years. They struggled and panted under their burden of
suit-cases, canvas kit bags, bundles and other receptacles. Their faces
wore expressions of anxiety and fatigue, and a few looked actually
terror stricken. In the crowds that lined the avenue were many women,
mothers, wives and sweethearts of the men, and their suffering was
often pitiful to see and to hear. Above the blare of the bands their
voices floated shrilly:
“There he is--there’s Henry. Oh, my God!”
“Abie! Ach mein sohn!”
“Oh! Oh! Isn’t it too horrible? All those boys going to their death!”
What brought me that sudden acute vision of memory was the complete
contrast of the facts and what those suffering women had foreseen as
facts. Also the astonishing contrast between the drafted recruit and
the soldier a few months’ work had created. Nowhere in the United
States had I ever seen anything like the husky young lieutenants who
were being introduced to me, and a few minutes later were escorting me
through the mud to the cottage where I was to have lunch. We ate in a
stone-flagged kitchen furnished with a table, some rough wooden chairs
and an old oak dresser that would have tempted a collector. There was a
huge fireplace, in the chimney of which hung a dozen hams and bacons,
and some garlickly sausages, all smoking in the fire of poplar logs.
The walls were hung with highly colored pictures of saints and martyrs.
The food was good and there were mountains of it. Beef stew, fried
potatoes, beans, vegetables, bread and butter, a pudding with raisins
and a wine sauce, cups and cups of hot coffee. Every one from the
captain down ate prodigiously, for it was the last sit-down-at-a-table
meal the men were going to enjoy for at least two weeks. Their corps
was starting for the trenches within an hour.
After lunch I hurried out to take a look at the relieving party of
soldiers, standing at ease on one side of the narrow street. They were
drafted men, not regulars, and this was to be their first taste of
fighting, their baptism of fire, as men have termed it. The far sound
of guns that troubled the air was all they knew of artillery. Two weeks
from that hour they would know more. They would be able to distinguish
between one gun and another, and to name each one as it roared. They
would have all the slang names, the Minnie Wurfer, the Dolly Sisters,
that explode more than once as they fly, the typewriters, as they call
machine guns. Now they knew only a distant growl, menacing, warning,
inviting. Were they ready, our men?
Physically they were ready. You could see that. Men who six or eight
months ago would have sent for an express wagon to carry more than a
suit-case, stood up there in the icy mud straight and clean and hard
as nails. Their chests filled their coats to the bulging point, and on
their backs they carried without strain or effort between sixty and
seventy pounds of equipment. Each man carried, besides his gun and
ammunition, half a tent, a haversack of clothing, a mess kit, a trench
tool, a gas mask, a bayonet, a knapsack of food, a water bottle, an
extra pair of heavy, hob-nailed boots, and a few other miscellaneous
articles of his own choosing.
“The blankets and really heavy things go on the trucks,” explained
one of the lieutenants. “The men carry with them no more than they
would absolutely have to have in case they were taken prisoner, extra
clothing and personal effects, I mean. A man who falls into the hands
of the Germans needs extra shirts, socks and boots. You bet, Fritz
hasn’t any to spare.”
Then I saw that the men of our army were ready indeed. At this frank
suggestion of possible capture by a cruel foe did they shudder and
turn pale? They did not. They grinned and wagged their absurd tin hats
and said: “You betcha,” and “You said it.” They were as unconcerned
as though they were waiting for a subway train instead of army trucks
headed for the trenches. Months of training, outdoor living, regular
habits, obedience to orders, devotion to an idea, have worked this
physical and spiritual miracle with our draft army. The men are as
strong as the Rooseveltian bull moose. They are hardened to mud and
cold and wildest weather, and their nerves are as steady as an old
clock.
Nearly four years ago the splendid armies of Belgium and France
rushed into the fray, the magnificent volunteer army of Great Britain
joining them in swift order. But none of those armies were quite
like ours. Those men went out, without adequate training, in a
passion of patriotism, in a glory of rage and pain. Their hearts were
blazing, their brains on fire. They knew that they must die if their
countries were to live. The American soldiers are fired by no such
strong emotion. The men I saw in France, on their way to the trenches,
were like men going to work. There was a fight ahead of them, and a
possibility of wounds and death. Well, that was their job, like mining,
or bridge building, or turning virgin soil to make a home. They faced
it calmly and conscientiously, and while they waited they made casual
conversation with the last woman they would see for weeks, the last
woman some of them would ever see.
“I seen you down at Aix-lay-Beans a while back, didn’t I?” remarked a
tall Texan, holding out a big hand for me to clasp. “Ain’t that some
town? Before that I used to think this here France was nothing but a
mud-hole. What do they want to fight for such a country, I used to say.
Let the Dutchies have it, I said, and let they-all move to Texas.”
“Yeah,” agreed a black-eyed, husky young Hebrew from the east side of
New York. “I used to think like that. It cost a lot of money to go to
Aix, but it was worth it every cent. Who wouldn’t fight to keep those
mountains and those grape fields running up them like a regular park?”
A young man with a Georgia address stenciled on his knapsack asked me
where I came from, and when I told him he said that I certainly looked
like a southerner. Anyhow I favored a young lady in Atlanta to whom he
was very partial. He hadn’t seen Aix-les-Bains, but give him Atlanta
for a sure enough city. He was going to live there after the war.
All of them expected to live through the war. Not one of them was
murmuring prayers, not one charged me with any farewell messages. A
young chap who said that he belonged to the 1919 class of Chicago
University urged me quite earnestly not to leave the village without
sampling the doughnuts fried fresh every day by the girls in the
Salvation Army hut directly back of us. “They fry nearly fifteen
hundred every day,” he told me, “and not a doughnut lasts long enough
to get cold.”
“How do you feel about going out to kill your first Germans?” I asked
curiously.
They were not going to let me know how delighted they were to get into
“the show” at last. They put on a magnificent air of indifference. “Got
to begin sometime,” said one, “might as well begin now.” “If we don’t
hustle some the French and English will finish the war without us,”
said another. “Then how’d we feel?” The eagerest reply I got was from
a strong-armed youth from Wyoming. “That’s what we’re here for, ain’t
we?” he exclaimed. “We’re here to kill Germans, and I say, for the love
of Mike, cut out some of the drill and let us fight.” I wish I could
reproduce the way he spoke that last word, fight.
“Don’t you kind of dread the cold and wet of the trenches?” I asked,
banteringly. The men laughed, they roared. “Say, lady,” called one man,
“the trenches haven’t got a darn thing on the barns we’ve been sleeping
in since last October.” They laughed again and the mirth spread to
the juvenile population of the village which, practically intact,
hung fondly around chewing American gum. “Good night,” shrilled the
children. It is the only English expression the French juvenile has
acquired, and he uses it on all occasions.
It was Sunday afternoon and across the narrow street the bells of the
village church began to ring for vespers. The curé, a tall, fine French
priest, came striding down the street, the skirts of his soutaine
held high out of the mud. With his free hand he swept off his hat to
the soldiers, calling _au revoirs_ as he passed. At the same time he
rounded up as many of the gum-chewing youngsters as he could, shooing
them ahead of him into the darkness of the old church.
The bell ceased its impatient clamor, and as if the bell had been
a tocsin, the village street became the scene of sudden, intense
activity. Orders were roared out and were repeated down the long
line. The men sprang to attention, moving like some dynamic piece of
machinery. Trucks began to wind and move noisily toward the highway.
Whips cracked, mules brayed, sirens sounded, and before I fairly
realized what had happened the men were on the march.
Snow was falling, first lightly, then in a dense cloud. I watched the
soldiers disappear quickly as in a thick mist. Soon even the chug
of their feet tramping through the mud was lost. The village street
was empty save of mire and falling snow. And in my heart was so much
bursting pride that there was no more room for any meaner emotions of
pity or of fear.