Map Illustrating the Battle of Langemarck.
Shaded Portion Indicates German Gain.
“The new line, of which our recent point of contact with the French formed the apex, ran quite roughly to the south and west. As shown above, it became necessary for Brigadier-General Turner, commanding the third brigade, to throw back his left flank southward to protect his rear. In the course of the confusion which followed upon the readjustment of position, the enemy, who had advanced rapidly after his initial successes, took four British 4.7 guns in a small wood to the west of the village of St. Julien, two miles in the rear of the original French trenches.
“The story of the second battle of Ypres is the story of how the Canadian division, enormously outnumbered, for they had in front of them at least four divisions, supported by immensely heavy artillery, with a gap still existing, though reduced, in their lines, and with dispositions made hurriedly under the stimulus of critical danger, fought through the day and through the night, and then through another day and night; fought under their officers until, as happened to so many, these perished gloriously, and then fought from the impulsion of sheer valor because they came from fighting stock.
“The enemy, of course, was aware, whether fully or not may perhaps be doubted, of the advantage his breach in the line had given him, and immediately began to push a formidable series of attacks upon the whole of the newly-formed Canadian salient.
“If it is possible to distinguish when the attack was everywhere so fierce, it developed with particular intensity at this moment upon the apex of the newly-formed line running in the direction of St. Julien. It has already been stated that four British guns were taken in a wood comparatively early in the evening of the 22d. In the course of that night, and under the heaviest machine-gun fire, this wood was assaulted by the Canadian Scottish, sixteenth battalion, of the third brigade, and the tenth battalion of the second brigade, which was intercepted for this purpose on its way to a reserve trench. The battalions were respectively commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Leckie, and Lieutenant-Colonel Boyle, and after a most fierce struggle in the light of a misty moon they took the position at the point of the bayonet. At midnight the second battalion, under Lieutenant-Colonel Watson and the Toronto regiment, Queen’s Own (third battalion), under Lieutenant-Colonel Rennie, both of the first brigade, brought up much-needed reinforcements, and though not actually engaged in the assault, were in reserve.
“All through the following days and nights these battalions shared the fortunes and misfortunes of the third brigade. An officer, who took part in the attack, describes how the men about him fell under the fire of the machine guns, which, in his phrase, played upon them ‘like a watering pot.’ He added quite simply, ‘I wrote my own life off,’ but the line never wavered. When one man fell another took his place, and with a final shout the survivors of the two battalions flung themselves into the wood.
“The German garrison was completely demoralized, and the impetuous advance of the Canadians did not cease until they reached the far side of the wood and entrenched themselves there in the position so dearly gained. They had, however, the disappointment of finding that the guns had been blown up by the enemy, and later on the same night, a most formidable concentration of artillery fire, sweeping the wood as a tropical storm sweeps the leaves from a forest, made it impossible for them to hold the position for which they had sacrified so much.
“The fighting continued without intermission all through the night and to those who observed the indications that the attack was being pushed with ever-growing strength, it hardly seemed possible that the Canadians, fighting in positions so difficult to defend, and so little the subject of deliberate choice, could maintain their resistance for any long period. At 6 A.M. on Friday it became apparent that the left was becoming more and more involved and a powerful German attempt to outflank it developed rapidly. The consequences if it had been broken or outflanked need not be insisted upon. They were not merely local.
“It was therefore decided, formidable as the attempt undoubtedly was, to try and give relief by a counter-attack upon the first line of German trenches, now far, far advanced from those originally occupied by the French. This was carried out by the Ontario first and fourth battalions of the first brigade, under Brigadier-General Mercer, acting in combination with a British brigade. It is safe to say that the youngest private in the rank, as he set his teeth for the advance, knew the task in front of him, and the youngest subaltern knew all that rested upon its success.
German Abuse of the White Flag.
An incident showing how a company of British soldiers were cut down by an ambushed enemy. The front rank of Germans had been firing from behind a small ridge. In apparent surrender they stood up in a long row and held up the white flag. The British advanced to receive their guns and take them prisoners, when suddenly the entire line fell down and a second line arose from behind the ridge and immediately killed all the British company. (Sphere copr.)
Terrible Effect of a German Shell on Wounded British Soldiers.
A party of wounded Highlanders were resting in a house on the bank of the Aisne River, where a doctor was attending them. A German shell came through the window and the soldiers resting on the sofas and on the floor were nearly all killed by flying fragments of shell. (Sphere copr.)
“It did not seem that any human being could live in the shower of shot and shell which began to play upon the advancing troops. They suffered terrible casualties. For a short time every man seemed to fall, but the attack was pressed even closer and closer. The fourth Canadian battalion at one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment, not more, it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Birchall, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men, and at the very moment when his example had infected them fell dead at the head of his battalion.
“With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward (for, indeed, they loved him) as if to avenge his death. The astonishing attack which followed, pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire, made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live forever in the memories of soldiers, was carried to the first line of German trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was bayoneted, and the trench was won.
“The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach which the enemy had made in the original line of the allies, and that it was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men who looked death indifferently in the face, for no man who took part in it could think that he was likely to live, saved the Canadian left. But it did more; up to the point where the assailants conquered or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not only taken, it was thereafter held against all comers, and in the teeth of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th, when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalions was relieved by fresh troops.
“It is necessary now to return to the fortunes of the third brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Turner, which, as we have seen, at five o’clock on Thursday was holding the Canadian left and after the first attack assumed the defense of the new Canadian salient, at the same time sparing all the men it could to form an extemporized line between the wood and St. Julien. This brigade also was, at the first moment of the German offensive, made the object of an attack by the discharge of poisonous gas. The discharge was followed by two enemy assaults. Although the fumes were extremely poisonous, they were not, perhaps, having regard to the wind, so disabling as on the French lines (which ran almost east to west), and the brigade, though affected by the fumes, stoutly beat back the two German assaults.
“Encouraged by this success, it rose to the supreme effort required by the assault of the wood, which has already been described. At 4 A.M. on the morning of Friday, the 23d, a fresh emission of gas was made both upon the second brigade, which held the line running northeast, and upon the third brigade, which, as has been fully explained, had continued the line up to the pivotal point, as defined above, and had then spread down in a southeasterly direction. It is perhaps worth mentioning, that two privates of the forty-eighth Highlanders, who found their way into the trenches commanded by Colonel Lipsett, ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, eighth battalion, perished of the fumes, and it was noticed that their faces became blue immediately after dissolution.
“The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, thirteenth battalion, and the forty-eighth Highlanders, fifteenth battalion, were more especially affected by the discharge. The Royal Highlanders, though considerably shaken, remained immovable upon their ground. The forty-eighth Highlanders, who no doubt received a more poisonous discharge, were for the moment dismayed and indeed their trench, according to the testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable. The battalion retired from the trench, but for a very short distance, and for an equally short time. In a few moments they were again their own. They advanced upon and occupied the trenches which they had momentarily abandoned.
“In the course of the same night the third brigade, which had already displayed a resource, a gallantry, and a tenacity, for which no eulogy could be excessive, was exposed (and with it the whole allied cause) to a peril still more formidable.
“It has been explained, and indeed the fundamental situation made the peril clear, that several German divisions were attempting to crush, or drive back this devoted brigade, and in any event to use their enormous numerical superiority to sweep around and overwhelm our left wing at a point in the line which cannot be precisely determined. The last attempt partially succeeded, and in the course of this critical struggle, German troops in considerable, though not in overwhelming, numbers swung past the unsupported left to the brigade and, slipping in between the wood and St. Julien, added to the torturing anxieties of the long-drawn-out struggle by the appearance, and indeed for the moment the reality, of isolation from the brigade base.
“In the exertions made by the third brigade during this supreme crisis, it is almost impossible to single out one battalion without injustice to others, but though the efforts of the Royal Highlanders of Montreal, thirteenth battalion, were only equal to those of the other battalions who did such heroic service, it so happened by chance that the fate of some of its officers attracted special attention.
“Major Norsworthy, already almost disabled by a bullet wound, was bayoneted and killed while he was rallying his men with easy cheerfulness. The case of Captain McCuaig, of the same battalion, was not less glorious, although his death can claim no witness. This most gallant officer was seriously wounded in a hurriedly constructed trench. At a moment when it would have been possible to remove him to safety, he absolutely refused to move, and continued in the discharge of his duty. But the situation grew instantly worse, and peremptory orders were received for an immediate withdrawal. Those who were compelled to obey them were most insistent to carry with them, at whatever risk to their own mobility and safety, an officer to whom they were devotedly attached. But he, knowing, it may be, better than they, the exertions which still lay in front of them, and unwilling to inflict upon them the disabilities of a maimed man, very resolutely refused, and asked of them one thing only, that there should be given to him as he lay alone in the trench, two loaded Colt revolvers to add to his own, which lay in his right hand as he made his last request. And so, with three revolvers ready to his hand for use, a very brave officer waited to sell his life, wounded and racked with pain, in an abandoned trench.
“On Friday afternoon the left of the Canadian line was strengthened by important reinforcements of British troops, amounting to seven battalions. From this time forward the Canadians also continued to receive further assistance on the left from a series of French counter-attacks pushed in a northeasterly direction from the canal bank.
“But the artillery fire of the enemy continually grew in intensity, and it became more and more evident that the Canadian salient could no longer be maintained against the overwhelming superiority of numbers by which it was assailed. Slowly, stubbornly, and contesting every yard, the defenders gave ground until the salient gradually receded from the apex near the point where it had originally aligned with the French, and fell back upon St. John.
“Soon it became evident that even St. Julien, exposed from right and left, was no longer tenable in the face of overwhelming numerical superiority. The third brigade was therefore ordered to retreat further south, selling every yard of ground as dearly as it had done since five o’clock on Thursday. But it was found impossible, without hazarding far larger forces, to disentangle the detachment of the Royal Highlanders of Montreal, thirteenth battalion, and of the Royal Montreal Regiment, fourteenth battalion. The brigade was ordered, and not a moment too soon, to move back. It left these units with hearts as heavy as those of his comrades who had said farewell to Captain McCuaig.
“The German line rolled, indeed, over the deserted village, but for several hours after the enemy had become master of the village the sullen and persistent rifle fire which survived showed that they were not yet master of the Canadian rear guard. If they died, they died worthy of Canada. The enforced retirement of the third brigade (and to have stayed longer would have been madness) reproduced for the second brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Curry, in a singularly exact fashion the position of the third brigade itself at the moment of the withdrawal of the French.
“The second brigade, it must be remembered, had retained the whole line of trenches, roughly five hundred yards, which it was holding at five o’clock on Thursday afternoon, supported by the incomparable exertions of the third brigade, and by the highly hazardous deployment in which necessity had involved that brigade. The second brigade had maintained its lines. It now devolved upon General Curry, commanding this brigade, to reproduce the tactical maneuvers by which earlier in the fight the third brigade had adapted itself to the flank movement of overwhelming numerical superiority. He flung his left flank round and his record is that in the very crisis of this immense struggle he held his line of trenches from Thursday at five o’clock until Sunday afternoon, and on Sunday afternoon he had not abandoned his trenches. There were none left. They had been obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were completely broken. Such a brigade!
“It is invidious to single out any battalion for special praise, but it is perhaps necessary to the story to point out that Lieutenant-Colonel Lipsett, commanding the ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, eighth battalion, of the second brigade, held the extreme left of the brigade position at the most critical moment.
“The battalion was expelled from the trenches early on Friday morning by an emission of poisonous gas, but recovering in three-quarters of an hour, it counter-attacked, retook the trenches it had abandoned and bayoneted the enemy, and after the third brigade had been forced to retire, Lieutenant-Colonel Lipsett held his position, though his left was in the air, until two British regiments filled up the gap on Saturday night.
“The individual fortunes of those two brigades have brought us to the events of Sunday afternoon, but it is necessary, to make the story complete, to recur for a moment to the events of the morning.
“After a very formidable attack the enemy succeeded in capturing the village of St. Julien, which has so often been referred to in describing the fortunes of the Canadian left. This success opened up a new and formidable line of advance, but by this time further reinforcements had arrived. Here again it became evident that the tactical necessities of the situation dictated an offensive movement, as the surest method of arresting further progress.
“General Alderson, who was in command of the reinforcements, accordingly directed that an advance should be made by a British brigade which had been brought up in support. The attack was thrust through the Canadian left and center, and as the troops making it swept on, many of them going to certain death, they paused an instant, and with deep-throated cheers for Canada gave the first indication to the division of the warm admiration which their exertions had excited in the British army.
“The advance was indeed costly, but it could not be gainsaid. The story is one of which the brigade may be proud, but it does not belong to the special account of the fortunes of the Canadian contingent. It is sufficient for our purpose to notice that the attack succeeded in its object, and the German advance along the line, which was momentarily threatened, was arrested.
“We had reached, in describing the events of the afternoon, the points at which the trenches of the second brigade had been completely destroyed. This brigade and the third brigade, and the considerable reinforcements which by this time filled the gap between the two brigades, were gradually driven, fighting every yard, upon a line running, roughly, from Fortuin, south of St. Julien, in a northeasterly direction towards Passchendale. Here the two brigades were relieved by two British brigades, after exertions as glorious, as fruitful, and, alas! as costly, as soldiers have ever been called upon to make.
“Monday morning broke bright and clear, and found the Canadians behind the firing line. This day, too, was to bring its anxieties. The attack was still pressed, and it became necessary to ask Brigadier-General Curry whether he could once more call upon his shrunken brigade.
“‘The men are tired,’ this indomitable soldier replied, ‘but they are ready and glad to go again to the trenches.’ And so once more, a hero leading heroes, the general marched back the men of the second brigade, reduced to a quarter of its original strength, to the apex of the line as it existed at that moment.
“This position he held all day Monday. On Tuesday he was still occupying reserve trenches, and on Wednesday was relieved and retired to billets in the rear.
“Such, in the most general outline, is the story of a great and glorious feat of arms. A story told so soon after the event, while tendering bare justice to units whose doings fell under the eyes of particular observers, must do less than justice to others who played their part—and all did—as gloriously as those whose special activities it is possible, even at this stage, to describe. But the friends of men who fought in other battalions may be content in the knowledge that they, too, shall learn, when time allows, the exact part which each unit played in these unforgettable days.”
THE GERMAN ADVANCE UPON PARIS — THE PRIZE OF PARIS — HEROIC EFFORTS OF FRENCH SOLDIERS — GERMANS BALKED OF THEIR PRIZE — SIXTY MILES OF FUGITIVES — TERROR IN EYES — PARIS THE BEAUTIFUL.
[The following article is reproduced by the courtesy of the New York Times.]
At least a million German soldiers—that is no exaggeration of a light pen, but the sober and actual truth—were advancing steadily upon the capital of France. They were close to Beauvais when I escaped from what was then a death-trap. They were fighting our British troops at Creil when I came to that town. Upon the following days they were holding our men in the Forest of Compiègne. They had been as near to Paris as Senlis, almost within gunshot of the outer forts.
“Nothing seems to stop them,” said many soldiers with whom I spoke. “We kill them and kill them, but they come on.”
The situation seemed to me almost ready for the supreme tragedy—the capture or destruction of Paris. The northwest of France lay very open to the enemy, abandoned as far south as Abbéville and Amiens, too lightly held by a mixed army corps of French and Algerian troops with their headquarters at Aumale.
Here was an easy way to Paris.
Always obsessed with the idea that the Germans must come from the east, the almost fatal error of this war, the French had girdled Paris with almost impenetrable forts on the east side, from those of Ecouen and Montmorency, by the far-flung forts of Chelles and Champigny, to those of Susy and Villeneuve, on the outer lines of the triple cordon; but on the west side, between Pontoise and Versailles, the defenses of Paris were weak. I say, “were,” because during the last days thousands of men were digging trenches and throwing up ramparts. Only the snakelike Seine, twining into a Pégoud loop, forms a natural defense to the western approach to the city, none too secure against men who have crossed many rivers in their desperate assaults.
This, then, was the Germans’ chance; it was for this that they had fought their way westward and southward through incessant battlefields from Mons and Charleroi to St. Quentin and Amiens and down to Creil and Compiègne, flinging away human life as though it were but rubbish for death-pits. The prize of Paris, Paris the great and beautiful, seemed to be within their grasp.
It was their intention to smash their way into it by this western entry and then to skin it alive. Holding this city at ransom, it was their idea to force France to her knees under threat of making a vast and desolate ruin of all those palaces and churches and noble buildings in which the soul of French history is enshrined.
I am not saying these things from rumor and hearsay, I am writing from the evidence of my own eyes after traveling several hundreds of miles in France along the main strategical lines, grim sentinels guarding the last barriers to that approaching death which was sweeping on its way through France to the rich harvest of Paris.
There was only one thing to do to escape from the menace of this death. By all the ways open, by any way, the population of Paris emptied itself like rushing rivers of humanity along all the lines which promised anything like safety.
The Anxious Hour.
Only those stayed behind to whom life means very little away from Paris and who if death came desired to die in the city of their life.
Again I write from what I saw and to tell the honest truth from what I suffered, for the fatigue of this hunting for facts behind the screen of war is exhausting to all but one’s moral strength, and even to that.
I found myself in the midst of a new and extraordinary activity of the French and English armies. Regiments were being rushed up to the center of the allied forces toward Creil, Montdidier, and Noyon.
This great movement continued for several days, putting to a severe test the French railway system, which is so wonderfully organized that it achieved this mighty transportation of troops with clockwork regularity. Working to a time-table dictated by some great brain in the headquarters of the French army, there were calculated with perfect precision the conditions of a network of lines on which troop trains might be run to a given point. It was an immense victory of organization, and a movement which heartened one observer at least to believe that the German death-blow would again be averted.
I saw regiment after regiment entraining. Men from the Southern Provinces, speaking the patois of the South; men from the Eastern Departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Châlons and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and center of France, in garrisons along the Loire. They were all in splendid spirits and utterly undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance.
“It is nothing, my little one,” said a dirty, unshaved gentleman with the laughing eyes of a D’Artagnan; “we shall bite their heads off. These brutal ‘bosches’ are going to put themselves in a ‘guet-apens,’ a veritable death-trap. We shall have them at last.”
Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges. The youngest of them had bristling beards, their blue coats with turned-back flaps were war-worn and flanked with the dust of long marches; their red trousers were sloppy and stained, but they had not forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was a joy to see.
They are very proud, these French soldiers, of fighting side by side with their old foes. The English now, after long centuries of strife, from Edward, the Black Prince, to Wellington, are their brothers-in-arms upon the battle-fields, and because I am English they offered me their cigarettes and made me one of them. But I realized even then that the individual is of no account in this inhuman business of war.
It is only masses of men that matter, moved by common obedience at the dictation of mysterious far-off powers, and I thanked Heaven that masses of men were on the move rapidly in vast numbers and in the right direction to support the French lines which had fallen back from Amiens a few hours before I left that town, and whom I had followed in their retirement, back and back, with the English always strengthening their left, but retiring with them almost to the outskirts of Paris itself.
Only this could save Paris—the rapid strengthening of the allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering ram of the enemy’s main army.
Undoubtedly the French headquarters staff was working heroically and with fine intelligence to save the situation at the very gates of Paris. The country was being swept absolutely clean of troops in all parts of France, where they had been waiting as reserves.
It was astounding to me to see, after those three days of rushing troop trains and of crowded stations not large enough to contain the regiments, how an air of profound solitude and peace had taken possession of all these routes.
In my long journey through and about France and circling round Paris I found myself wondering sometimes whether all this war had not been a dreadful illusion without reality, and a transformation had taken place, startling in its change, from military turmoil to rural peace.
Dijon was emptied of its troops. The road to Châlons was deserted by all but fugitives. The great armed camp at Châlons itself had been cleared out except for a small garrison. The troops at Tours had gone northward to the French center. All our English reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen.
There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great, swift movement—the French and English lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy’s metal by a force strong enough to resist its mighty mass.
It was still possible that the Germans might be smashed on their left wing, hurled back to the west between Paris and the sea, and cut off from their line of communications. It was undoubtedly this impending peril which scared the enemy’s headquarters staff and upset all its calculations. They had not anticipated the rapidity of the supporting movement of the allied armies, and at the very gates of Paris they saw themselves balked of their prize, the greatest prize of the war, by the necessity of changing front.
The Great German Howitzers.
Hauling a German twenty-one centimeter Howitzer on its firing mat with a purchase on the wheels, which are fitted with caterpillar pads to prevent sinking into soft mud.
Frightful Destruction Caused by German Siege Guns.
Ruins of the Fort Loncin at Liège, Belgium, after the German army had bombarded it with their huge guns and reduced to fragments the strong concrete fortifications. (Copyright by International News Service.)
To do them justice, they realized instantly the new order of things, and with quick and marvelous decision did not hesitate to alter the direction of their main force. Instead of proceeding to the west of Paris they swung round steadily to the southeast in order to keep their armies away from the enveloping movement of the French and English and drive their famous wedge-like formation southward for the purpose of dividing the allied forces of the west from the French army of the east. The miraculous had happened, and Paris, for a little time at least, was unmolested.
After wandering along the westerly and southerly roads I started for Paris when thousands and scores of thousands were flying from it. At that time I believed, as all France believed, that in a few hours German shells would be crashing across the fortifications of the city and that Paris the beautiful would be Paris the infernal. It needed a good deal of resolution on my part to go deliberately to a city from which the population was fleeing, and I confess quite honestly that I had a nasty sensation in the neighborhood of my waistcoat buttons at the thought.
Along the road from Tours to Paris there were sixty unbroken miles of people—on my honor, I do not exaggerate, but write the absolute truth. They were all people who had despaired of breaking through the dense masses of their fellow-citizens camped around the railway stations, and had decided to take the roads as the only way of escape.
The vehicles were taxicabs, for which the rich paid fabulous prices; motor cars which had escaped military requisition, farmers’ carts laden with several families and piles of household goods, shop carts drawn by horses already tired to the point of death because of the weight of the people who crowded behind, pony traps and governess carts.
Many persons, well dressed and belonging obviously to well-to-do bourgeoisie, were wheeling barrows like costers, but instead of trundling cabbages were pushing forward sleeping babies and little children, who seemed on the first stage to find new amusement and excitement in the journey from home; but for the most part they trudged along bravely, carrying their babies and holding the hands of their little ones.
They were of all classes, rank and fortune being annihilated by the common tragedy. Elegant women whose beauty is known in Paris salons, whose frivolity, perhaps, in the past was the main purpose of their life, were now on a level with the peasant mothers of the French suburbs and with the “midinettes” of Montmartre, and their courage did not fail them so quickly.
I looked into many proud, brave faces of these delicate women, walking in high-heeled shoes, all too frail for the hard, dusty roadways. They belonged to the same race and breed as those ladies who defied death with fine disdain upon the scaffold of the guillotine in the great Revolution.
They were leaving Paris now, not because of any fears for themselves—I believe they were fearless—but because they had decided to save the little sons and daughters of soldier fathers.
This great army in retreat was made up of every type familiar in Paris.
Here were women of the gay world, poor creatures whose painted faces had been washed with tears, and whose tight skirts and white stockings were never made for a long march down the highways of France.
Here also were thousands of those poor old ladies who live on a few francs a week in the top attics of the Paris streets which Balzac knew; they had fled from their poor sanctuaries and some of them were still carrying cats and canaries, as dear to them as their own lives.
There was one young woman who walked with a pet monkey on her shoulder while she carried a bird in a golden cage. Old men, who remembered 1870, gave their arms to old ladies to whom they had made love when the Prussians were at the gates of Paris then.
It was pitiful to see these old people now hobbling along together—pitiful, but beautiful also, because of their lasting love.
Young boy students, with ties as black as their hats and rat-tail hair, marched in small companies of comrades, singing brave songs, as though they had no fear in their hearts, and very little food, I think, in their stomachs.
Shopgirls and concierges, city clerks, old aristocrats, young boys and girls, who supported grandfathers and grandmothers and carried new-born babies and gave pick-a-back rides to little brothers and sisters, came along the way of retreat.
Each human being in the vast torrent of life will have an unforgettable story of adventure to tell if life remains. As a novelist I should have been glad to get their narratives along this road for a great story of suffering and strange adventure, but there was no time for that and no excuse.
When I met many of them they were almost beyond the power of words. The hot sun of this September had beaten down upon them—scorching them as in the glow of molten metal. Their tongues clave to their mouths with thirst.
Some of them had that wild look in their eyes which is the first sign of the delirium of thirst and fatigue.
Nothing to eat or drink could be found on the way from Paris. The little roadside cafés had been cleared out by the preceding hordes.
Unless these people carried their own food and drink they could have none except of the charity of their comrades in misfortune, and that charity has exceeded all other acts of heroism in this war. Women gave their last biscuit, their last little drop of wine, to poor mothers whose children were famishing with thirst and hunger; peasant women fed other women’s babies when their own were satisfied.
It was a tragic road. At every mile of it there were people who had fainted on the roadside and poor old men and women who could go no farther, but sat on the banks below the hedges, weeping silently or bidding younger ones go forward and leave them to their fate. Young women who had stepped out jauntily at first were so footsore and lame that they limped along with lines of pain about their lips and eyes.
Many of the taxicabs, bought at great prices, and many of the motor cars had broken down as I passed, and had been abandoned by their owners, who had decided to walk. Farmers’ carts had bolted into ditches and lost their wheels. Wheelbarrows, too heavy to be trundled, had been tilted up, with all their household goods spilled into the roadway, and the children had been carried farther, until at last darkness came, and their only shelter was a haystack in a field under the harvest moon.
For days also I have been wedged up with fugitives in railway trains more dreadful than the open roads, stifling in their heat and heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger’s hand, for comfort in their wretchedness and weakness. Yet on the whole they have shown amazing courage, and, after their tears, have laughed at their own breakdown, and, always the children of France have been superb, so that again and again I have wondered at the gallantry with which they endured this horror. Young boys have revealed the heroic strain in them and have played the part of men in helping their mothers. And yet, when I came at last into Paris against all this tide of retreat, it seemed a needless fear that had driven these people away.
Then I passed long lines of beautiful little villas on the Seine side, utterly abandoned among their trees and flowers. A solitary fisherman held his line above the water as though all the world were at peace, and in a field close to the fortifications which I expected to see bursting with shells, an old peasant bent above the furrows and planted cabbages. Then, at last, I walked through the streets of Paris and found them strangely quiet and tranquil.
The people I met looked perfectly calm. There were a few children playing in the gardens of Champs Elysées and under the Arc de Triomphe symbolical of the glory of France.
I looked back upon the beauty of Paris all golden in the light of the setting sun, with its glinting spires and white gleaming palaces and rays of light flashing in front of the golden trophies of its monuments. Paris was still unbroken. No shell had come shattering into this city of splendor, and I thanked Heaven that for a little while the peril had passed.
CAVE-DWELLING THE LOT OF MODERN SOLDIERS — GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH — STANDARDIZED MODEL — FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS — “COMFORTS OF HOME”—BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE — “PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR — RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE — THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER — WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES — “PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS.
“Other times, other manners” applies as accurately to the battle-field as it does elsewhere. The cavalry charge is nearly extinct, mass formation is going, hand-to-hand conflict is rarely found, and now, it appears, the old-fashioned and romantic bivouac is no more. Trench-fighting has been carried on to such an extent in France and Belgium, and Poland, that the open camp, with its rows of little tents, outposts, and sentry guard, becomes almost a forgotten picture of warfare. Doubtless the military schools of the future will make provision for special instruction in the construction of commodious caverns on the battle-field, safe, warm, and containing all the comforts of a barrack.
The modern warrior, like a mole, lives under ground and displays his greatest activity at night. With the coming of subterranean warfare, as trench-fighting can be appropriately called, great armies have had to adopt unique methods. They have been compelled to build peculiar little forts—for a trench is a fort, in fact—wherever their soldiers meet the enemy. In consequence these rectangular excavations have been improved far beyond their original outline.
The first trench was nothing more nor less than a hole in the ground, deep enough to protect a man kneeling, standing, or sitting, as the case might be. Before the advent of the modern rifle and modern cannon, these defenses, with several feet of loose earth thrown up in front of them, served admirably. In those days the question of head-cover was of minor importance; today a protective roofing is the sine qua non of any well-constructed trench. Early in the European war it was discovered that the trench offered the safest haven from the bursting shells of the enemy’s field artillery. To all intents and purposes, shrapnel, or, as its inventor termed it, the man-killing projectile—is practically harmless in its effect upon entrenched troops. Unless a shell can be placed absolutely within the two-feet wide excavation it wastes its destructive powers on the inoffensive earth and air. This has led to a modification of artillery methods, which, in turn, compels the elaboration of the trench and emphasizes the importance of head-cover.
“The history of the great war,” to quote from a French paper, “will show, among other things, how the Germans profited by the lessons of recent conflicts. The South African, the Russo-Japanese, and the Balkan wars were studied minutely by them, and their particular preparations, their tactics, and their artifices result from the knowledge thus acquired. They learned much, especially, as regards the formation of trenches.
“After 1870 we confined ourselves to three regulation types of trenches: for men prone, kneeling, and standing. While in training, our soldiers were taught how to take shelter momentarily between advances, by digging up the soil a little and lying flat behind the smallest of mounds. They were instructed, moreover, how to protect themselves from the enemy’s fire by propping up their knapsacks in front of them. This meant insufficient protection, and an extremely dangerous visibility, since the foe, by simply counting the number of knapsacks, could know the strength opposed to him. To insure the making of such shelter, a French company was equipped with eighty picks and eighty spades; that is, 160 tools for 250 men. These tools were fixed on to the knapsacks; and it took some time to bring them into use.”
The German methods for defensive and offensive trench-making are quite different. Each man has a tool of his own, which is fixed on to the scabbard of his sword-bayonet. When occasion for fighting arises, the line conceals itself, and, as soon as it is engaged, it prepares for possible retreat, making strong positions assuring an unrelenting defensive and counter-attacks.
It is on these sound principles that all the German fighting-lines are organized, on a more or less standardized model. The fighting-lines consist generally of one, two, or three lines of shelter-trenches lying parallel, measuring twenty or twenty-five inches in width, and varying in length according to the number they hold; the trenches are joined together by zigzag approaches and by a line of reinforced trenches (armed with machine guns), which are almost completely proof against rifle, machine gun, or gun fire. The ordinary German trenches are almost invisible from 350 yards away, a distance which permits a very deadly fire. It is easy to realize that if the enemy occupies three successive lines and a line of reinforced entrenchments, the attacking line is likely, at the lowest estimate, to be decimated during an advance of 650 yards—by rifle-fire at a range of 350 yards’ distance, and by the extremely quick fire of the machine guns, which can each deliver from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the field-trench, it is obvious, a soldier enjoys far greater security than he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely fifteen inches deep. He has merely to stoop down a little to disappear below the level of the ground and be immune from infantry fire; moreover, his machine guns can fire without endangering him. In addition, this stooping position brings the man’s knapsack on a level with his helmet, thus forming some protection against shrapnel and shell-splinters.
At the back of the German trenches, shelters are dug for non-commissioned officers and for the commander of the unit. The latter’s shelter is connected with the communication trench; the others are not. If one adds that the bank, or, rather, the earth that is dug from the trenches and spread out in front, extends for five or six yards, and is covered with grass, or appropriate vegetation, it will be recognized that the works concealing the German lines can be seen only when a near approach is made to them.