It was in the summer of 1918 that Edward Bok received from the British
Government, through its department of public information, of which Lord
Beaverbrook was the minister, an invitation to join a party of thirteen
American editors to visit Great Britain and France. The British
Government, not versed in publicity methods, was anxious that selected
parties of American publicists should see, personally, what Great
Britain had done, and was doing in the war; and it had decided to ask a
few individuals to pay personal visits to its munition factories, its
great aerodromes, its Great Fleet, which then lay in the Firth of Forth,
and to the battle-fields. It was understood that no specific obligation
rested upon any member of the party to write of what he saw: he was
asked simply to observe and then, with discretion, use his observations
for his own guidance and information in future writing. In fact, each
member was explicitly told that much of what he would see could not be
revealed either personally or in print.
The party embarked in August amid all the attendant secrecy of war
conditions. The steamer was known only by a number, although later it
turned out to be the White Star liner, Adriatic. Preceded by a powerful
United States cruiser, flanked by destroyers, guided overhead by
observation balloons, the Adriatic was found to be the first ship in a
convoy of sixteen other ships with thirty thousand United States troops
on board.
It was a veritable Armada that steamed out of lower New York harbor on
that early August morning, headed straight into the rising sun. But it
was a voyage of unpleasant war reminders, with life-savers carried every
moment of the day, with every light out at night, with every window and
door as if hermetically sealed so that the stuffy cabins deprived of
sleep those accustomed to fresh air, with over sixty army men and
civilians on watch at night, with life-drills each day, with lessons as
to behavior in life-boats; and with a fleet of eighteen British
destroyers meeting the convoy upon its approach to the Irish Coast after
a thirteen days' voyage of constant anxiety. No one could say he
travelled across the Atlantic Ocean in war days for pleasure, and no one
did.
Once ashore, the party began a series of inspections of munition plants,
ship-yards, aeroplane factories and of meetings with the different
members of the English War Cabinet. Luncheons and dinners were the order
of each day until broken by a journey to Edinburgh to see the amazing
Great Fleet, with the addition of six of the foremost fighting machines
of the United States Navy, all straining like dogs at leash, awaiting an
expected dash from the bottled-up German fleet. It was a formidable
sight, perhaps never equalled: those lines of huge, menacing, and yet
protecting fighting machines stretching down the river for miles, all
conveying the single thought of the power and extent of the British Navy
and its formidable character as a fighting unit.
It was upon his return to London that Bok learned, through the
confidence of a member of the British "inner circle," the amazing news
that the war was practically over: that Bulgaria had capitulated and was
suing for peace; that two of the Central Power provinces had indicated
their strong desire that the war should end; and that the first peace
intimations had gone to the President of the United States. All
diplomatic eyes were turned toward Washington. Yet not a hint of the
impending events had reached the public. The Germans were being beaten
back, that was known; it was evident that the morale of the German army
was broken; that Foch had turned the tide toward victory; but even the
best-informed military authorities outside of the inner diplomatic
circles, predicted that the war would last until the spring of 1919,
when a final "drive" would end it. Yet, at that very moment, the end of
the war was in sight!
Next Bok went to France to visit the battle-fields. It was arranged that
the party should first, under guidance of British officers, visit back
of the British lines; and then, successively, be turned over to the
American and French Governments, and visit the operations back of their
armies.
It is an amusing fact that although each detail of officers delegated to
escort the party "to the front" received the most explicit instructions
from their superior officers to take the party only to the quiet sectors
where there was no fighting going on, each detail from the three
governments successively brought the party directly under shell-fire,
and each on the first day of the "inspection." It was unconsciously
done: the officers were as much amazed to find themselves under fire as
were the members of the party, except that the latter did not feel the
responsibility to an equal degree. The officers, in each case, were
plainly worried: the editors were intensely interested.
They were depressing trips through miles and miles of devastated
villages and small cities. From two to three days each were spent in
front-line posts on the Amiens-Bethune, Albert-Peronne,
Bapaume-Soissons, St. Mihiel, and back of the Argonne sectors. Often,
the party was the first civilian group to enter a town evacuated only a
week before, and all the horrible evidence of bloody warfare was fresh
and plain. Bodies of German soldiers lay in the trenches where they had
fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be
touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns
were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were
deserted, the streets desolate. It was an appalling panorama of the most
frightful results of war.
The picturesqueness and romance of the war of picture books were
missing. To stand beside an English battery of thirty guns laying a
barrage as they fired their shells to a point ten miles distant, made
one feel as if one were an actual part of real warfare, and yet far
removed from it, until the battery was located from the enemy's "sausage
observation"; then the shells from the enemy fired a return salvo, and
the better part of valor was discretion a few miles farther back.
The amazing part of the "show," however, was the American doughboy.
Never was there a more cheerful, laughing, good-natured set of boys in
the world; never a more homesick, lonely, and complaining set. But good
nature predominated, and the smile was always uppermost, even when the
moment looked the blackest, the privations were worst, and the longing
for home the deepest.
Bok had been talking to a boy who lived near his own home, who was on
his way to the front and "over the top" in the Argonne mess. Three days
afterward, at a hospital base where a hospital train was just
discharging its load of wounded, Bok walked among the boys as they lay
on their stretchers on the railroad platform waiting for bearers to
carry them into the huts. As he approached one stretcher, a cheery voice
called, "Hello, Mr. Bok. Here I am again."
It was the boy he had left just seventy-two hours before hearty and
well.
"Well, my boy, you weren't in it long, were you?"
"No, sir," answered the boy; "Fritzie sure got me first thing. Hadn't
gone a hundred yards over the top. Got a cigarette?" (the invariable
question).
Bok handed a cigarette to the boy, who then said: "Mind sticking it in
my mouth?" Bok did so and then offered him a light; the boy continued,
all with his wonderful smile: "If you don't mind, would you just light
it? You see, Fritzie kept both of my hooks as souvenirs."
With both arms amputated, the boy could still jest and smile!
It was the same boy who on his hospital cot the next day said: "Don't
you think you could do something for the chap next to me, there on my
left? He's really suffering: cried like hell all last night. It would be
a Godsend if you could get Doc to do something."
A promise was given that the surgeon should be seen at once, but the boy
was asked: "How about you?"
"Oh," came the cheerful answer, "I'm all right. I haven't anything to
hurt. My wounded members are gone--just plain gone. But that chap has
got something--he got the real thing!"
What was the real thing according to such a boy's idea?
There were beautiful stories that one heard "over there." One of the
most beautiful acts of consideration was told, later, of a lovable boy
whose throat had been practically shot away. During his convalescence he
had learned the art of making beaded bags. It kept him from talking, the
main prescription. But one day he sold the bag which he had first made
to a visitor, and with his face radiant with glee he sought the
nurse-mother to tell her all about his good fortune. Of course, nothing
but a series of the most horrible guttural sounds came from the boy: not
a word could be understood. It was his first venture into the world with
the loss of his member, and the nurse-mother could not find it in her
heart to tell the boy that not a word which he spoke was understandable.
With eyes full of tears she placed both of her hands on the boy's
shoulders and said to him: "I am so sorry, my boy. I cannot understand a
word you say to me. You evidently do not know that I am totally deaf.
Won't you write what you want to tell me?"
A look of deepest compassion swept the face of the boy. To think that
one could be so afflicted, and yet so beautifully tender and always so
radiantly cheerful, he wrote her.
Pathos and humor followed rapidly one upon the other "at the front" in
those gruesome days, and Bok was to have his spirits lightened somewhat
by an incident of the next day. He found himself in one of the numerous
little towns where our doughboys were billeted, some in the homes of the
peasants, others in stables, barns, outhouses, lean-tos, and what not.
These were the troops on their way to the front where the fighting in
the Argonne Forest was at that time going on. As Bok was walking with an
American officer, the latter pointed to a doughboy crossing the road,
followed by as disreputable a specimen of a pig as he had ever seen.
Catching Bok's smile, the officer said: "That's Pinney and his porker.
Where you see the one you see the other."