CHAPTER XVI
THE MAN OF YPRES
The sun was high when we reached the little town where General Foch, Commander of the Armies of the North, had his headquarters. It was not difficult to find the building. The French flag furled at the doorway, a gendarme at one side of the door and a sentry at the other, denoted the headquarters of the staff. But General Foch was not there at the moment. He had gone to church.
The building was near. Thinking that there might be a service, I decided to go also. Going up a steep street to where at the top stood a stone church, with an image of the Christ almost covered by that virgin vine which we call Virginia creeper, I opened the leather-covered door and went quietly in.
There was no service. The building was quite empty. And the Commander of the Armies of the North, probably the greatest general the French have in the field to-day, was kneeling there alone.
He never knew I had seen him. I left before he did. Now, as I look back, it seems to me that that great general on his knees alone in that little church is typical of the attitude of France to-day toward the war.
It is a totally different attitude from the English—not more heroic, not braver, not more resolute to an end. But it is peculiarly reverential. The enemy is on the soil of France. The French are fighting for their homes, for their children, for their country. And in this great struggle France daily, hourly, on its knees asks for help.
I went to the hotel—an ancient place, very small, very clean, very cold and shabby. The entrance was through an archway into a cobble-paved courtyard, where on the left, under the roof of a shed, the saddles of cavalry horses and gendarmes were waiting on saddle trestles. Beyond, through a glazed door, was a long dining room, with a bare, white-scrubbed floor and whitewashed walls. Its white table-cloths, white walls and ceiling and white floor, with no hint of fire, although a fine snow had commenced to fall, set me to shivering. Even the attempt at decoration of hanging baskets, of trailing vines with strings of red peppers, was hardly cheering.
From the window a steep, walled garden fell away, dreary enough under the grey sky and the snowfall. The same curious pale-green moss covered the trees, and beyond the garden wall, in a field, was a hole where a German aëroplane had dropped a bomb.
Hot coffee had been ordered, and we went into a smaller room for it.
Here there was a fire, with four French soldiers gathered round it.
One of them was writing at the table. The others were having their
palms read.
"You have a heart line," said the palmist to one of them—"a heart line like a windmill!"
I drank my coffee and listened. I could understand only a part of it, but it was eminently cheerful. They laughed, chaffed each other, and although my presence in the hotel must have caused much curiosity in that land of no women, they did not stare at me. Indeed, it was I who did the gazing.
After a time I was given a room. It was at the end of a whitewashed corridor, from which pine doors opened on either side into bedrooms. The corridor was bare of carpet, the whole upstairs freezing cold. There were none of the amenities. My room was at the end. It boasted two small windows, with a tiny stand between them containing a tin basin and a pitcher; a bed with one side of the mattress torn open and exposing a heterogeneous content that did not bear inspection; a pine chair, a candle and a stove.
They called it a stove. It had a coal receptacle that was not as large as a porridge bowl, and one small lump of coal, pulverized, was all it held. It was lighted with a handful of straw. Turn your back and count ten, and it was out. Across the foot of the bed was one of the Continental feather comforts which cover only one's feet and let the rest freeze.
It was not so near the front as La Panne, but the windows rattled incessantly from the bombardment of Ypres. I glanced through one of the windows. The red tiles I had grown to know so well were not in evidence. Most of the roofs were blue, a weathered and mottled blue, very lovely, but, like everything else about the town, exceedingly cold to look at.
Shortly after I had unpacked my few belongings I was presented to General Foch, not at headquarters, but at the house in which he was living. He came out himself to meet me, attended by several of his officers, and asked at once if I had had déjeuner. I had not, so he invited me to lunch with him and with his staff.
Déjeuner was ready and we went in immediately. A long table had been laid for fourteen. General Foch took his place at the centre of one of the long sides, and I was placed in the seat of honour directly across. As his staff is very large, only a dozen officers dine with him. The others, juniors in the service, are billeted through the town and have a separate mess.
Sitting where I did I had a very good opportunity to see the hero of Ypres, philosopher, strategist and theorist, whose theories were then bearing the supreme test of war.
Erect, and of distinguished appearance, General Foch is a man rather past middle life, with heavy iron-grey hair, rather bushy grey eyebrows and a moustache. His eyes are grey and extremely direct. His speech incisive and rather rapid.
Although some of the staff had donned the new French uniform of grey-blue, the general wore the old uniform, navy-blue, the only thing denoting his rank being the three dull steel stars on the embroidered sleeve of his tunic.
There was little ceremony at the meal. The staff remained standing until General Foch and I were seated. Then they all sat down and déjeuner was immediately served.
One of the staff told me later that the general is extremely punctilious about certain things. The staff is expected to be in the dining room five minutes before meals are served. A punctual man himself, he expects others to be punctual. The table must always be the epitome of neatness, the food well cooked and quietly served.
Punctuality and neatness no doubt are due to his long military training, for General Foch has always been a soldier. Many of the officers of France owe their knowledge of strategy and tactics to his teaching at the École de Guerre.
General Foch led the conversation. Owing to the rapidity of his speech, it was necessary to translate much of it for me. We spoke, one may say, through a clearing house. But although he knew it was to be translated to me, he spoke, not to the interpreter, but to me, and his keen eyes watched me as I replied. And I did not interview General Foch. General Foch interviewed me. I made no pretence at speaking for America. I had no mission. But within my limitations I answered him as well as I could.
"There are many ties between America and France," said General Foch. "We wish America to know what we are doing over here, to realise that this terrible war was forced on us."
I mentioned my surprise at the great length of the French line—more than four hundred miles.
"You do not know that in America?" he asked, evidently surprised.
I warned him at once not to judge the knowledge of America by what I myself knew, that no doubt many quite understood the situation.
"But you have been very modest," I said. "We really have had little information about the French Army and what it is doing, unless more news is going over since I left."
"We are more modest than the Germans, then?"
"You are, indeed. There are several millions of German-born Americans who are not likely to let America forget the Fatherland. There are many German newspapers also."
"What is the percentage of German population?"
I told him. I think I was wrong. I think I made it too great. But I had not expected to be interviewed.
"And these German newspapers, are they neutral?"
"Not at all. Very far from it."
I told him what I knew of the German propaganda in America, and he listened intently.
"What is its effect? Is it influencing public opinion?"
"It did so undeniably for a time. But I believe it is not doing so much now. For one thing, Germany's methods on the sea will neutralise all her agents can say in her favour—that and the relaxation of the restrictions against the press, so that something can be known of what the Allies are doing."
"You have known very little?"
"Absurdly little."
There was some feeling in my tone, and he smiled.
"We wish to have America know the splendid spirit of the French Army," he said after a moment. "And the justice of its cause also."
I asked him what he thought of the future.
"There is no question about the future," he said with decision. "That is already settled. When the German advance was checked it was checked for good."
"Then you do not believe that they will make a further advance toward
Paris?"
"Certainly not."
He went on to explain the details of the battle of the Marne, and how in losing that battle the invading army had lost everything.
It will do no harm to digress for a moment and explain exactly what the French did at the battle of the Marne.
All through August the Allies fell back before the onward rush of the Germans. But during all that strategic retreat plans were being made for resuming the offensive again. This necessitated an orderly retreat, not a rout, with constant counter-engagements to keep the invaders occupied. It necessitated also a fixed point of retreat, to be reached by the different Allied armies simultaneously.
When, on September fifth, the order for assuming the offensive was given, the extreme limit of the retreat had not yet been reached. But the audacity of the German march had placed it in a position favourable for attack, and at the same time extremely dangerous for the Allies and Paris if they were not checked.
On the evening of September fifth General Joffre sent this message to all the commanders of armies:
"The hour has come to advance at all costs, and do or die where you stand rather than give way."
The French did not give way. Paris was saved after a colossal battle, in which more than two million men were engaged. The army commanded by General Foch was at one time driven back by overwhelming odds, but immediately resumed the offensive, and making a flank attack forced the Germans to retreat.
Not that he mentioned his part in the battle of the Marne. Not that any member of his staff so much as intimated it. But these are things that get back.
"How is America affected by the war?"
I answered as best I could, telling him something of the paralysis it had caused in business, of the war tax, and of our anxiety as to the status of our shipping.
"From what I can gather from the newspapers, the sentiment in America is being greatly influenced by the endangering of American shipping,"
"Naturally. But your press endeavours to be neutral, does it not?"
"Not particularly," I admitted. "Sooner or later our papers become partisan. It is difficult not to. In this war one must take sides."
"Certainly. One must take sides. One cannot be really neutral in this war. Every country is interested in the result, either actively now or later on, when the struggle is decided. One cannot be disinterested; one must be partisan."
The staff echoed this.
Having been interviewed by General Foch for some time, I ventured to ask him a question. So I asked, as I asked every general I met, if the German advance had been merely ruthless or if it had been barbaric.
He made no direct reply, but he said:
"You must remember that the Germans are not only fighting against an army, they are fighting against nations; trying to destroy their past, their present, even their future."
"How does America feel as to the result of this war?" he asked, "I suppose it feels no doubt as to the result."
Again I was forced to explain my own inadequacy to answer such a question and my total lack of authority to voice American sentiment. While I was confident that many Americans believed in the cause of the Allies, and had every confidence in the outcome of the war, there remained always that large and prosperous portion of the population, either German-born or of German parentage, which had no doubt of Germany's success.
"It is natural, of course," he commented. "How many French have you in the United States?"
I thought there were about three hundred thousand, and said so.
"You treat your people so well in France," I said, "that few of them come to us."
He nodded and smiled.
"What do you think of the blockade, General Foch?" I said. "I have just crossed the Channel and it is far from comfortable."
"Such a blockade cannot be," was his instant reply; "a blockade must be continuous to be effective. In a real blockade all neutral shipping must be stopped, and Germany cannot do this."
One of the staff said "Bluff!" which has apparently been adopted into the French language, and the rest nodded their approval.
Their talk moved on to aëroplanes, to shells, to the French artillery. General Foch considered that Zeppelins were useful only as air scouts, and that with the coming of spring, with short nights and early dawns, there would be no time for them to range far. The aëroplanes he considered much more valuable.
"One thing has impressed me," I said, "as I have seen various artillery duels—the number of shells used with comparatively small result. After towns are destroyed the shelling continues. I have seen a hillside where no troops had been for weeks, almost entirely covered with shell holes."
He agreed that the Germans had wasted a great deal of their ammunition.
Like all great commanders, he was intensely proud of his men and their spirit.
"They are both cheerful and healthy," said the general; "splendid men.
We are very proud of them. I am glad that America is to know something
of their spirit, of the invincible courage and resolution of the
French to fight in the cause of humanity and justice."
Luncheon was over. It had been a good luncheon, of a mound of boiled cabbage, finely minced beef in the centre, of mutton cutlets and potatoes, of strawberry jam, cheese and coffee. There had been a bottle of red wine on the table. A few of the staff took a little, diluting it with water. General Foch did not touch it.
We rose. I had an impression that I had had my interview; but the hospitality and kindness of this French general were to go further.
In the little corridor he picked up his dark-blue cap and we set out for official headquarters, followed by several of the officers. He walked rapidly, taking the street to give me the narrow sidewalk and going along with head bent against the wind. In the square, almost deserted, a number of staff cars had gathered, and lorries lumbered through. We turned to the left, between the sentry and the gendarme, and climbing a flight of wooden stairs were in the anteroom of the general's office. Here were tables covered with papers, telephones, maps, the usual paraphernalia of such rooms. We passed through a pine door, and there was the general's room—a bare and shabby room, with a large desk in front of the two windows that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more papers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantelpiece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous Louis-Quinze clock, under glass. There were great maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my attention at once to the clock.
"During the battle of the Yser," he said, "night and day my eyes were on that clock. Orders were sent. Then it was necessary to wait until they were carried out. It was by the clock that one could know what should be happening. The hours dragged. It was terrible."
It must have been terrible. Everywhere I had heard the same story. More than any of the great battles of the war, more even than the battle of the Marne, the great fight along the Yser, from the twenty-first of October, 1914, to the twelfth of November, seems to have impressed itself in sheer horror on the minds of those who know its fearfulness. At every headquarters I have found the same feeling.
It was General Foch's army that reënforced the British at that battle. The word had evidently been given to the Germans that at any cost they must break through. They hurled themselves against the British with unprecedented ferocity. I have told a little of that battle, of the frightful casualties, so great among the Germans that they carried their dead back and burned them in great pyres. The British Army was being steadily weakened. The Germans came steadily, new lines taking the place of those that were gone. Then the French came up, and, after days of struggle, the line held.
General Foch opened a drawer of the desk and showed me, day by day, the charts of the battle. They were bound together in a great book, and each day had a fresh page. The German Army was black. The French was red. Page after page I lived that battle, the black line advancing, the blue of the British wavering against overwhelming numbers and ferocity, the red line of the French coming up. "The Man of Ypres," they call General Foch, and well they may.
"They came," said General Foch, "like the waves of the sea."
It was the second time I had heard the German onslaught so described.
He shut the book and sat for a moment, his head bent, as though in living over again that fearful time some of its horror had come back to him.
At last: "I paced the floor and watched the clock," he said.
How terrible! How much easier to take a sword and head a charge! How much simpler to lead men to death than to send them! There in that quiet room, with only the telephone and the ticking of the clock for company, while his staff waited outside for orders, this great general, this strategist on whose strategy hung the lives of armies, this patriot and soldier at whose word men went forth to die, paced the floor.
He walked over to the clock and stood looking at it, his fine head erect, his hands behind him. Some of the tragedy of those nineteen days I caught from his face.
But the line held.
To-day, as I write this, General Foch's army in the North and the British are bearing the brunt of another great attack at Ypres.[E] The British have made a gain at Neuve Chapelle, and the Germans have retaliated by striking at their line, some miles farther north. If they break through it will be toward Calais and the sea. Every offensive movement in this new warfare of trench and artillery requires a concentration of reserves. To make their offensive movement the British have concentrated at Neuve Chapelle. The second move of this game of death has been made by the other side against the weakened line of the Allies. During the winter the line, in this manner, automatically straightened. But what will happen now?
[Footnote E: Battle of Neuve Chapelle March, 1915.]
One thing we know: General Foch will send out his brave men, and, having sent them, will watch the Louis-Quinze clock and wait. And other great generals will send out their men, and wait also. There will be more charts, and every fresh line of black or blue or red or Belgian yellow will mean a thousand deaths, ten thousand deaths.
They are fighting to-day at Ypres. I have seen that flat and muddy battlefield. I have talked with the men, have stood by the batteries as they fired. How many of the boys I watched playing prisoners' base round their guns in the intervals of firing are there to-day? How many remain of that little company of soldiers who gave three cheers for me because I was the only woman they had seen for months? How many of the officers who shrugged their shoulders when I spoke of danger have gone down to death?
Outside the window where I am writing this, Fifth Avenue, New York, has just left its churches and is flaunting its spring finery in the sun. Across the sea, such a little way as measured by time, people are in the churches also. The light comes through the ancient, stained-glass windows and falls, not on spring finery, not on orchids and gardenias, but on thousands of tiny candles burning before the shrine of the Mother of Pity.
It is so near. And it is so terrible. How can we play? How can we think of anything else? But for the grace of God, your son and mine lying there in the spring sunlight on the muddy battlefield of Ypres!
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE"
I was taken to see the battlefield of Ypres by Captain Boisseau, of the French War Academy, and Lieutenant René Puaux, of the staff of General Foch. It was a bright and sunny day, with a cold wind, however, that set the water in the wayside ditches to rippling.
All the night before I had wakened at intervals to heavy cannonading and the sharp cracking of mitrailleuse. We were well behind the line, but the wind was coming from the direction of the battlefield.
The start was made from in front of General Foch's headquarters. He himself put me in the car, and bowed an au revoir.
"You will see," he said, "the French soldier in the field, and you will see him cheerful and well. You will find him full also of invincible courage and resolution."
And all that he had said, I found. I found the French soldiers smiling and cheerful and ruddy in the most wretched of billets. I found them firing at the enemy, still cheerful, but with a coolness of courage that made my own shaking nerves steady themselves.
Today, when that very part of the line I visited is, as was expected when I was there, bearing the brunt of the German attack in the most furious fighting of the war, I wonder, of those French soldiers who crowded round to see the first woman they had beheld for months, how many are lying on that muddy battlefield? What has happened on that road, guarded by buried quick-firers, that stretched to the German trenches beyond the poplar trees? Did the "rabbit trap" do its work? Only for a time, I think, for was it not there that the Germans broke through? Did the Germans find and silence that concealed battery of seventy-five-millimetre guns under its imitation hedge? Who was in the tree lookout as the enemy swarmed across, and did he get away?
Except for the constant road repairing there was little to see during the first part of the journey. Here in a flat field, well beyond the danger zone, some of the new British Army was digging practice trenches in the mud. Their tidy uniforms were caked with dirt, their faces earnest and flushed. At last the long training at Salisbury Plain was over, and here they were, if not at the front, within hearing distance of the guns. Any day now a bit of luck would move them forward, and there would be something doing.
By now, no doubt, they have been moved up and there has been something doing. Poor lads! I watched them until even their khaki-coloured tents had faded into the haze. The tall, blonde, young officer, Lieutenant Puaux, pointed out to me a detachment of Belgian soldiers mending roads. As our car passed they leaned on their spades and looked after us.
"Belgian carabineers," he said. "They did some of the most heroic work of the war last summer and autumn. They were decorated by the King. Now they are worn out and they mend roads!"
For—and this I had to learn—a man may not fight always, even although he escapes actual injury. It is the greatest problem of commanding generals that they must be always moving forward fresh troops. The human element counts for much in any army. Nerves go after a time. The constant noise of the guns has sent men mad.
More than ever, in this new warfare, is the problem serious. For days the men suffer not only the enemy's guns but the roar of their own batteries from behind them. They cannot always tell which side they hear. Their tortured ears ache with listening. And when they charge and capture an outpost it is not always certain that they will escape their own guns. In one tragic instance that I know of this happened.
The route was by way of Poperinghe, with its narrow, crowded streets, its fresh troops just arrived and waiting patiently, heavy packs beside them, for orders. In Poperinghe are found all the troops of the Allies: British, Belgian, French, Hindus, Cingalese, Algerians, Moroccans. Its streets are a series of colourful pictures, of quaint uniforms, of a babel of tongues, of that minor confusion that is order on a great scale. The inevitable guns rumbled along with six horses and three drivers: a lead driver, a centre driver and wheel driver. Unlike the British guns, there are generally no gunners with the guns, but only an officer or two. The gunners go ahead on foot. Lines of hussars rode by, making their way slowly round a train of British Red-Cross ambulances.
At Elverdingue I was to see the men in their billets. Elverdingue was another Poperinghe—the same crowds of soldiers, the same confusion, only perhaps more emphasised, for Elverdingue is very near the front, between Poperinghe and Ypres and a little to the north, where the line that curves out about Ypres bends back again.
More guns, more hussars. It was difficult to walk across the narrow streets. We watched our chance and broke through at last, going into a house at random. As each house had soldiers billeted in it, it was certain we would find some, and I was to see not selected quarters but billets chosen at random. Through a narrow, whitewashed centre hall, with men in the rooms on either side, and through a muddy kitchen, where the usual family was huddled round a stove, we went into a tiny, brick-paved yard. Here was a shed, a roof only, which still held what remained of the winter's supply of coal.
Two soldiers were cooking there. Their tiny fire of sticks was built against a brick wall, and on it was a large can of stewing meat. One of the cooks—they were company cooks—was watching the kettle and paring potatoes in a basket. The other was reading a letter aloud. As the officers entered the men rose and saluted, their bright eyes taking in this curious party, which included, of all things, a woman!
"When did you get in from the trenches?" one of the officers asked.
"At two o'clock this morning, Monsieur le Capitaine."
"And you have not slept?"
"But no. The men must eat. We have cooked ever since we returned."
Further questioning elicited the facts that he would sleep when his company was fed, that he was twenty-two years old, and that—this not by questions but by investigation—he was sheltered against the cold by a large knitted muffler, an overcoat, a coat, a green sweater, a flannel shirt and an undershirt. Under his blue trousers he wore also the red ones of an old uniform, the red showing through numerous rents and holes.
"You have a letter, comrade!" said the Lieutenant to the other man.
"From my family," was the somewhat sheepish reply.
Round the doorway other soldiers had gathered to see what was occurring. They came, yawning with sleep, from the straw they had been sleeping on, or drifted in from the streets, where they had been smoking in the sun. They were true republicans, those French soldiers. They saluted the officers without subservience, but as man to man. And through a break in the crowd a new arrival was shoved forward. He came, smiling uneasily.
"He has the new uniform," I was informed, and he must turn round to show me how he looked in it.
We went across the street and through an alleyway to an open place where stood an old coach house. Here were more men, newly in from the front. The coach house was a ruin, far from weather-proof and floored with wet and muddy straw. One could hardly believe that that straw had been dry and fresh when the troops came in at dawn. It was hideous now, from the filth of the trenches. The men were awake, and being advised of our coming by an anxious and loud-voiced member of the company who ran ahead, they were on their feet, while others, who had been sleeping in the loft, were on their way down the ladder.
"They have been in a very bad place all night," said the Captain.
"They are glad to be here, they say."
"You mean that they have been in a dangerous place?"
The men were laughing among themselves and pushing forward one of their number. Urged by their rapid French, he held out his cap to me. It had been badly torn by a German bullet. Encouraged by his example, another held out his cap. The crown had been torn almost out of it.
"You see," said Captain Boisseau, "it was not a comfortable night. But they are here, and they are content."
I could understand it, of course, but "here" seemed so pitifully poor a place—a wet and cold and dirty coach house, open to all the winds that blew; before it a courtyard stabling army horses that stood to the fetlocks in mud. For food they had what the boy of twenty-two or other cooks like him were preparing over tiny fires built against brick walls. But they were alive, and there were letters from home, and before very long they expected to drive the Germans back in one of those glorious charges so dear to the French heart. They were here, and they were content.
More sheds, more small fires, more paring of potatoes and onions and simmering of stews. The meal of the day was in preparation and its odours were savoury. In one shed I photographed the cook, paring potatoes with a knife that looked as though it belonged on the end of a bayonet. And here I was lined up by the fire and the cook—and the knife—and my picture taken. It has not yet reached me. Perhaps it went by way of England, and was deleted by the censor as showing munitions of war!
From Elverdingue the road led north and west, following the curves of the trenches. We went through Woesten, where on the day before a dramatic incident had taken place. Although the town was close to the battlefield and its church in plain view from the German lines, it had escaped bombardment. But one Sunday morning a shot was fired. The shell went through the roof of the church just above the altar, fell and exploded, killing the priest as he knelt. The hole in the roof of the building bore mute evidence to this tragedy. It was a small hole, for the shell exploded inside the building. When I saw it a half dozen planks had been nailed over it to keep out the rain.
There were trees outside Woesten, more trees than I had been accustomed to nearer the sea. Here and there a troop of cavalry horses was corralled in a grove; shaggy horses, not so large as the English ones. They were confined by the simple expedient of stretching a rope from tree to tree in a large circle.
"French horses," I said, "always look to me so small and light compared with English horses."
Then a horse moved about, and on its shaggy flank showed plainly the mark of a Western branding iron! They were American cow ponies from the plains.
"There are more than a hundred thousand American horses here," observed the Lieutenant. "They are very good horses."
Later on I stopped to stroke the soft nose of a black horse as it stood trembling near a battery of heavy guns that was firing steadily. It was American too. On its flank there was a Western brand. I gave it an additional caress, and talked a little American into one of its nervous, silky ears. We were both far from home, a trifle bewildered, a bit uneasy and frightened.
And now it was the battlefield—the flat, muddy plain of Ypres. On the right bodies of men, sheltered by intervening groves and hedges, moved about. Dispatch riders on motor cycles flew along the roads, and over the roof of a deserted farmhouse an observation balloon swung in the wind. Beyond the hedges and the grove lay the trenches, and beyond them again German batteries were growling. Their shells, however, were not bursting anywhere near us.
The balloon was descending. I asked permission to go up in it, but when I saw it near at hand I withdrew the request. It had no basket, like the ones I had seen before, but instead the observers, two of them, sat astride a horizontal bar.
The English balloons have a basket beneath, I am told. One English airship man told me that to be sent up in a stationary balloon was the greatest penalty a man could be asked to pay. The balloon jerks at the end of its rope like a runaway calf, and "the resulting nausea makes sea-sickness seem like a trip to the Crystal Palace."
So I did not go up in that observation balloon on the field of Ypres. We got out of the car, and trudged after the balloon as it was carried to its new position by many soldiers. We stood by as it rose again above the tree tops, the rope and the telephone wire hanging beneath it. But what the observers saw that afternoon from their horizontal bar I do not yet know—trenches, of course. But trenches are interesting in this war only when their occupants have left them and started forward. Batteries and ammunition trains, probably, the latter crawling along the enemy's roads. But both of these can be better and more easily located by aëroplanes.
The usefulness of the captive balloon in this war is doubtful. It serves, at the best, to take the place of an elevation of land in this flat country, is a large and tempting target, and can serve only on very clear days, when there is no ground mist—a difficult thing to achieve in Flanders.
We were getting closer to the front all the time. As the automobile jolted on, drawing out for transports, for ambulances and ammunition wagons, the two French officers spoke of the heroism of their men. They told me, one after the other, of brave deeds that had come under their own observation.
"The French common soldier is exceedingly brave—quite reckless," one of them said. "Take, for instance, the case, a day or so ago, of Philibert Musillat, of the 168th Infantry. We had captured a communication trench from the Germans and he was at the end of it, alone. There was a renewal of the German attack, and they came at him along the trench. He refused to retreat. His comrades behind handed him loaded rifles, and he killed every German that appeared until they lay in a heap. The Germans threw bombs at him, but he would not move. He stood there for more than twelve hours!"
There were many such stories, such as that of the boys of the senior class of the military school of St. Cyr, who took, the day of the beginning of the war, an oath to put on gala dress, white gloves and a red, white and blue plume, when they had the honour to receive the first order to charge.
They did it, too. Theatrical? Isn't it just splendidly boyish? They did it, you see. The first of them to die, a young sub-lieutenant, was found afterward, his red, white and blue plume trampled in the mud, his brave white gloves stained with his own hot young blood. Another of these St. Cyr boys, shot in the face hideously and unable to speak, stood still under fire and wrote his orders to his men. It was his first day under fire.
A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front of his trench and the enemy, in that No Man's Land of so many tragedies. His comrades, afraid of hitting him, stopped firing.
"Go on!" he called to them. "No matter about me. Shoot at them!"
So they fired, and he writhed for a moment.
"I got one of yours that time!" he said.
The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the ground, beyond reach. He ceased moving, and they thought he was dead. One may believe that they hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the slow dying of No Man's Land. But after a time he raised his head.
"Look out," he called. "They are coming again. They are almost up to me!"
That is all of that story.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION
The car stopped. We were at the wireless and telephone headquarters for the French Army of the North. It was a low brick building, and outside, just off the roadway, was a high van full of telephone instruments. That it was moved from one place to another was shown when, later in the day, returning by that route, we found the van had disappeared.
It was two o'clock. The German wireless from Berlin had just come in. At three the receiving station would hear from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was curious to stand there and watch the operator, receivers on his ears, picking up the German message. It was curious to think that, just a little way over there, across a field or two, the German operator was doing the same thing, and that in an hour he would be receiving the French message.
All the batteries of the army corps are—or were—controlled from that little station. The colonel in charge came out to greet us, and to him Captain Boisseau gave General Foch's request to show me batteries in action.
The colonel was very willing. He would go with us himself. I conquered a strong desire to stand with the telephone building between me and the German lines, now so near, and looked about. A French aëroplane was overhead, but there was little bustle and activity along the road. It is a curious fact in this war that the nearer one is to the front the quieter things become. Three or four miles behind there is bustle and movement. A mile behind, and only an occasional dispatch rider, a few men mending roads, an officer's car, a few horses tethered in a wood, a broken gun carriage, a horse being shod behind a wall, a soldier on a lookout platform in a tree, thickets and hedges that on occasion spout fire and death—that is the country round Ypres and just behind the line, in daylight.
We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that arc which the Germans are, as I write, trying so hard to break through. The papers say that they are shelling Ypres and that it is burning. They were shelling it that day also. But now, as then, I cannot believe it is burning. There was nothing left to burn.
While arrangements were being made to visit the batteries, Lieutenant Puaux explained to me a method they had established at that point for measuring the altitude of hostile aëroplanes for the guns.
"At some anti-aircfaft batteries," he explained, "they have the telemeter for that purpose. But here there is none. So they use the system of visée laterale, or side sight, literally."
He explained it all carefully to me. I understood it at the time, I think.
I remember saying it was perfectly clear, and a child could do it, and a number of other things. But the system of visée laterale has gone into that part of my mind which contains the Latin irregular verbs, harmonies, the catechism and answers to riddles.
There is a curious feeling that comes with the firing of a large battery at an unseen enemy. One moment the air is still; there is a peaceful plain round. The sun shines, and heavy cart horses, drawing a wagon filled with stones for repairing a road, are moving forward steadily, their heads down, their feet sinking deep in the mud. The next moment hell breaks loose. The great guns stand with smoking jaws. The message of death has gone forth. Over beyond the field and that narrow line of trees, what has happened? A great noise, the furious recoiling of the guns, an upcurling of smoke—that is the firing of a battery. But over there, perhaps, one man, or twenty, or fifty men, lying still.
So I required assurance that this battery was not being fired for me. I had no morbid curiosity as to batteries. One of the officers assured me that I need have no concern. Though they were firing earlier than had been intended, a German battery had been located and it was their instructions to disable it.
The battery had been well concealed.
"No German aëroplane has as yet discovered it," explained the officer in charge.
To tell the truth, I had not yet discovered it myself. We had alighted from the machine in a sea of mud. There was mud everywhere.
A farmhouse to the left stood inaccessible in it. Down the road a few feet a tree with an observation platform rose out of it. A few chickens waded about in it. A crowd of soldiers stood at a respectful distance and watched us. But I saw no guns.
One of the officers stooped and picked up the cast shoe of a battery horse, and shaking the mud off, presented it to me.
"To bring you luck," he said, "and perhaps luck to the battery!"
We left the road, and turning to the right made a floundering progress across a field to a hedge. Only when we were almost there did I realise that the hedge was the battery.
"We built it," said the officer in charge. "We brought the trees and saplings and constructed it. Madame did not suspect?"
Madame had not suspected. There were other hedges in the neighbourhood, and the artificial one had been well contrived. Halfway through the field the party paused by a curious elevation, flat, perhaps twenty feet across and circular.
"The cyclone cellar!" some one said. "We will come here during the return fire."
But one look down the crude steps decided me to brave the return fire and die in the open. The cave below the flat roof, turf-covered against the keen eyes of aeroplanes, was full of water. The officers watched my expression and smiled.
And now we had reached the battery, and eager gunners were tearing away the trees and shrubbery that covered them. In an incredible space of time the great grey guns, sinister, potential of death, lay open to the bright sky. The crews gathered round, each man to his place. The shell was pushed home, the gunners held the lanyards.
"Open your mouth wide," said the officer in charge, and gave the signal.
The great steel throats were torn open. The monsters recoiled, as if aghast at what they had done. Their white smoke curled from the muzzles. The dull horses in the road lifted their heads.
And over there, beyond the line of poplar trees, what?
One by one they fired the great guns. Then all together, several rounds. The air was torn with noise. Other batteries, far and near, took up the echo. The lassitude of the deadlock was broken.
And then overhead the bursting shell of a German gun. The return fire had commenced!
I had been under fire before. The sound of a bursting shell was not a new one. But there had always before been a strong element of chance in my favour. When the Germans were shelling a town, who was I that a shell should pick me out to fall on or to explode near? But this was different. They were firing at a battery, and I was beside that battery. It was all very well for the officer in charge to have said they had never located his battery. I did not believe him. I still doubt him. For another shell came.
The soldiers from the farmhouse had gathered behind us in the field. I turned and looked at them. They were smiling. So I summoned a shaky smile myself and refused the hospitality of the cellar full of water.
One of the troopers stepped out from the others.
"We have just completed a small bridge," he said—"a bridge over the canal. Will madame do us the honour of walking across it? It will thus be inaugurated by the only lady at the front."
Madame would. Madame did. But without any real enthusiasm. The men cheered, and another German shell came, and everything was merry as a marriage bell.
They invited me to climb the ladder to the lookout in the tree and look at the enemy's trenches. But under the circumstances I declined. I felt that it was time to move on and get hence. The honour of being the only woman who had got to the front at Ypres began to weigh heavy on me. I mentioned the passing of time and the condition of the roads.
So at last I got into the car. The officers of the battery bowed, and the men, some fifty of them, gave me three rousing cheers. I think of them now, and there is a lump in my throat. They were so interested, so smiling and cheery, that bright late February afternoon, standing in the mud of the battlefield of Ypres, with German shells bursting overhead. Half of them, even then, had been killed or wounded. Each day took its toll of some of them, one way or another.
How many of them are left to-day? The smiling officer, so debonair, so proud of his hidden battery, where is he? The tiny bridge, has it run red this last week? The watchman in the tree, what did he see, that terrible day when the Germans got across the canal and charged over the flat lands?
The Germans claim to have captured guns at or near this place. One thing I am sure of: This battery or another, it was not taken while there were men belonging to it to defend it. The bridge would run red and the water under the bridge, the muddy field be strewn with bodies, before those cheery, cool-eyed and indomitable French gunners would lose their guns.
The car moved away, fifty feet, a hundred feet, and turned out to avoid an ammunition wagon, disabled in the road. It was fatal. We slid off into the mire and settled down. I looked back at the battery. A fresh shell was bursting high in the air.
We sat there, interminable hours that were really minutes, while an orderly and the chauffeur dug us out with spades. We conversed of other things. But it was a period of uneasiness on my part. And, as if to point the lesson and adorn the tale, away to the left, rising above the plain, was the church roof with the hole in it—mute evidence that even the mantle of righteousness is no protection against a shell.
Our course was now along a road just behind the trenches and paralleling them, to an anti-aircraft station.
I have seen a number of anti-aircraft stations at the front: English ones near the coast and again south of Ypres; guns mounted, as was this French battery, on the plain of a battlefield; isolated cannon in towers and on the tops of buildings and water tanks. I have seen them in action, firing at hostile planes. I have never yet seen them do any damage, but they serve a useful purpose in keeping the scouting machines high in the air, thus rendering difficult the work of the enemy's observer. The real weapon against the hostile aeroplane is another machine. Several times I have seen German Taubes driven off by French aviators, and winging a swift flight back to their lines. Not, one may be sure, through any lack of courage on the part of German aviators. They are fearless and extremely skilful. But because they have evidently been instructed to conserve their machines.
I had considerable curiosity as to the anti-aircraft batteries. How was it possible to manipulate a large field gun, with a target moving at a varying height, and at a speed velocity of, say, sixty miles an hour?
The answer was waiting on the field just north of Ypres.
A brick building by the road was evidently a storehouse for provisions for the trenches. Unloaded in front of it were sacks of bread, meal and provisions. And standing there in the sunshine was the commander of the field battery, Captain Mignot. A tall and bearded man, essentially grave, he listened while Lieutenant Puaux explained the request from General Foch that I see his battery. He turned and scanned the sky.
"We regret," he said seriously, "that at the moment there is no aëroplane in sight. We will, however, show Madame everything."
He led the way round the corner of the building to where a path, neatly banked, went out through the mud to the battery.
"Keep to the path," said a tall sign. But there was no temptation to do otherwise. There must have been fifty acres to that field, unbroken by hedge or tree. As we walked out, Captain Mignot paused and pointed his finger up and somewhat to the right.
"German shrapnel!" he said. True enough, little spherical clouds told where it had burst harmlessly.
As cannonading had been going on steadily all the afternoon, no one paid any particular attention. We walked on in the general direction of the trenches.
The gunners were playing prisoner's base just beyond the guns. When they saw us coming the game ceased, and they hurried to their stations. Boys they were, most of them. The youth of the French troops had not impressed me so forcibly as had the boyishness of the English and the Belgians. They are not so young, on an average, I believe. But also the deception of maturity is caused by a general indifference to shaving while in the field.
But Captain Mignot evidently had his own ideas of military smartness, and these lads were all clean-shaven. They trooped in from their game, under that little cloud of shrapnel smoke that still hung in the sky, for all the world a crowd of overheated and self-conscious schoolboys receiving an unexpected visit from the master of the school.
The path ended at the battery. In the centre of the guns was a raised platform of wood, and a small shelter house for the observer or officer on duty. There were five guns in pits round this focal point and forming a circle. And on the platform in the centre was a curious instrument on a tripod.
"The telemeter," explained Captain Mignot; "for obtaining the altitude of the enemy's aëroplane."
Once again we all scanned the sky anxiously, but uselessly.
"I don't care to have any one hurt," I said; "but if a plane is coming
I wish it would come now. Or a Zeppelin."
The captain's serious face lighted in a smile.
"A Zeppelin!" he said. "We would with pleasure wait all the night for a Zeppelin!"
He glanced round at the guns. Every gunner was in his place. We were to have a drill.
"We will suppose," he said, "that a German aëroplane is approaching. To fire correctly we must first know its altitude. So we discover that with this." He placed his hand on the telemeter. "There are, you observe, two apertures, one for each eye. In one the aëroplane is seen right side up. In the other the image is inverted, upside down. Now! By this screw the images are made to approach, until one is superimposed exactly over the other. Immediately on the lighted dial beneath is shown the altitude, in metres."
I put my eyes to the openings, and tried to imagine an aëroplane overhead, manoeuvring to drop a bomb or a dart on me while I calculated its altitude. I could not do it.
Next I was shown the guns. They were the famous seventy-five-millimetre guns of France, transformed into aircraft guns by the simple expedient of installing them in a pit with sloping sides, so that their noses pointed up and out. To swing them round, so that they pointed readily toward any portion of the sky, a circular framework of planks formed a round rim to the pit, and on this runway, heavily greased, the muzzles were swung about.
The gun drill began. It was executed promptly, skilfully. There was no bungling, not a wrong motion or an unnecessary one, as they went through the movements of loading, sighting and firing the guns. It was easy to see why French artillery has won its renown. The training of the French artilleryman is twice as severe as that of the infantryman. Each man, in addition to knowing his own work on the gun, must be able to do the work of all the eleven others. Casualties must occur, and in spite of them the work of the gun must go on.
Casualties had occurred at that station. More than half the original battery was gone. The little shelter house was splintered in a hundred places. There were shell holes throughout the field, and the breech of one gun had recently been shattered and was undergoing repair.
The drill was over and the gunners stood at attention. I asked permission to photograph the battery, and it was cheerfully given. One after the other I took the guns, until I had taken four. The gunners waited smilingly expectant. For the last gun I found I had no film, but I could not let it go at that. So I pointed the empty camera at it and snapped the shutter. It would never do to show discrimination.
Somewhere in London are all those pictures. They have never been sent to me. No doubt a watchful English government pounced on them in the mail, and, in connection with my name, based on them most unjust suspicions. They were very interesting. There was Captain Mignot, and the two imposing officers from General Foch's staff; there were smiling young French gunners; there was the telemeter, which cost, they told me, ten thousand francs, and surely deserved to have its picture taken, and there was one, not too steady, of a patch of sunny sky and a balloon-shaped white cloud, where another German shrapnel had burst overhead.
The drill was over. We went back along the path toward the road. Behind the storehouse the evening meal was preparing in a shed. The battery was to have a new ration that night for a change, bacon and codfish. Potatoes were being pared into a great kettle and there was a bowl of eggs on a stand. It appeared to me, accustomed to the meagre ration of the Belgians, that the French were dining well that night on the plains of Ypres.
In a stable near at hand a horse whinnied. I patted him as I passed, and he put his head against my shoulder.
"He recognises you!" said Captain Boisseau. "He too is American."
It was late afternoon by that time. The plan to reach the advanced trenches was frustrated by an increasing fusillade from the front. There were barbed-wire entanglements everywhere, and every field was honeycombed with trenches. One looked across the plain and saw nothing. Then suddenly as we advanced great gashes cut across the fields, and in these gashes, although not a head was seen, were men. The firing was continuous. And now, going down a road, with a line of poplar trees at the foot and the setting sun behind us throwing out faint shadows far ahead, we saw the flash of water. It was very near. It was the flooded river and the canal. Beyond, eight hundred yards or less from where we stood, were the Germans. To one side the inundation made a sort of bay.
It was along this part of the field that the Allies expected the
German Army to make its advance when the spring movement commenced.
And as nearly as can be learned from the cabled accounts that is where
the attack was made.
A captain from General d'Urbal's staff met us at the trenches, and pointed out the strategical value of a certain place, the certainty of a German advance, and the preparations that were made to meet it.
It was odd to stand there in the growing dusk, looking across to where was the invading army, only a little over two thousand feet away. It was rather horrible to see that beautiful landscape, the untravelled road ending in the line of poplars, so very close, where were the French outposts, and the shining water just beyond, and talk so calmly of the death that was waiting for the first Germans who crossed the canal.
CHAPTER XIX
"I NIBBLE THEM"
I went into the trenches. The captain was very proud of them.
"They represent the latest fashion in trenches!" he explained, smiling faintly.
It seemed to me that I could easily have improved on that latest fashion. The bottom was full of mud and water. Standing in the trench, I could see over the side by making an effort. The walls were wattled—that is, covered with an interlacing of fagots which made the sides dry.
But it was not for that reason only that these trenches were called the latest fashion. They were divided, every fifteen feet or so, by a bulwark of earth about two feet thick, round which extended a communication trench.
"The object of dividing these trenches in this manner is to limit the havoc of shells that drop into them," the captain explained. "Without the earth bulwark a shell can kill every man in the trench. In this way it can kill only eight. Now stand at this end of the trench. What do you see?"
What I saw was a barbed-wire entanglement, leading into a cul-de-sac.
"A rabbit trap!" he said. "They will come over the field there, and because they cannot cross the entanglement they will follow it. It is built like a great letter V, and this is the point."
The sun had gone down to a fiery death in the west. The guns were firing intermittently. Now and then from the poplar trees came the sharp ping of a rifle. The evening breeze had sprung up, ruffling the surface of the water, and bringing afresh that ever-present and hideous odour of the battlefield. Behind us the trenches showed signs of activity as the darkness fell.
Suddenly the rabbit trap and the trench grew unspeakably loathsome and hideous to me. What a mockery, this business of killing men! No matter that beyond the canal there lurked the menace of a foe that had himself shown unspeakable barbarity and resource in plotting death. No matter if the very odour that stank in my nostrils called loud for vengeance. I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German wounded responding so readily to kindness and a smile. I saw them driven across that open space, at the behest of frantic officers who were obeying a guiding ambition from behind. I saw them herded like cattle, young men and boys and the fathers of families, in that cruel rabbit trap and shot by men who, in their turn, were protecting their country and their homes.
I have in my employ a German gardener. He has been a member of the household for years. He has raised, or helped to raise, the children, has planted the trees, and helped them, like the children, through their early weakness. All day long he works in the garden among his flowers. He coaxes and pets them, feeds them, moves them about in the sun. When guests arrive, it is Wilhelm's genial smile that greets them. When the small calamities of a household occur, it is Wilhelm's philosophy that shows us how to meet them.
Wilhelm was a sergeant in the German Army for five years. Now he is an American citizen, owning his own home, rearing his children to a liberty his own childhood never knew.
But, save for the accident of emigration, Wilhelm would to-day be in the German Army. He is not young, but he is not old. His arms and shoulders are mighty. But for the accident of emigration, then, Wilhelm, working to-day in the sun among his Delphiniums and his iris, his climbing roses and flowering shrubs, would be wearing the helmet of the invader; for his vine-covered house he would have substituted a trench; for his garden pick a German rifle.
For Wilhelm was a faithful subject of Germany while he remained there. He is a Socialist. He does not believe in war. Live and help others to live is his motto. But at the behest of the Kaiser, Wilhelm too would have gone to his appointed place.
It was of Wilhelm then, and others of his kind, that I thought as I stood in the end of the new-fashion trench, looking at the rabbit trap. There must be many Wilhelms in the German Army, fathers, good citizens, kindly men who had no thought of a place in the sun except for the planting of a garden. Men who have followed the false gods of their country with the ardent blue eyes of supreme faith.
I asked to be taken home.
On the way to the machine we passed a mitrailleuse buried by the roadside. Its location brought an argument among the officers. Strategically it would be valuable for a time, but there was some question as to its position in view of a retirement by the French.
I could not follow the argument. I did not try to. I was cold and tired, and the red sunset had turned to deep purple and gold. The guns had ceased. Over all the countryside brooded the dreadful peace of sheer exhaustion and weariness. And in the air, high overhead, a German plane sailed slowly home.
* * * * *
Sentries halted us on the way back holding high lanterns that set the bayonets of their guns to gleaming. Faces pressed to the glass, they surveyed us stolidly, making sure that we were as our passes described us. Long lines of marching men turned out to let us pass. As darkness settled down, the location of the German line, as it encircled Ypres, was plainly shown by floating fusées. In every hamlet reserves were lining up for the trenches, dark masses of men, with here and there a face thrown into relief as a match was held to light a cigarette. Open doors showed warm, lamp-lit interiors and the glow of fires.
I sat back in the car and listened while the officers talked together. They were speaking of General Joffre, of his great ability, of his confidence in the outcome of the war, and of his method, during those winter months when, with such steady fighting, there had been so little apparent movement. One of the officers told me that General Joffre had put his winter tactics in three words:
"I nibble them."