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Title: The Wonder of War on Land
Author: Francis Rolt-Wheeler
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THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND
* * * * * *
BOOKS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
U. S. Service Series
Illustrations from Photographs taken for U. S. Government, Large 12mo.
Cloth. Price $1.35 each.
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. EXPLORERS=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. LIFE-SAVERS=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. MAIL=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. WEATHER MEN=
=THE BOY WITH THE U. S. NATURALISTS=
Museum Series
Illustrations from Photographs loaned by American Museum of Natural
History. Large 12mo. Cloth.
Price $1.35 each.
=THE MONSTER-HUNTERS=
=THE POLAR HUNTERS=
=THE AZTEC-HUNTERS=
=THE WONDER OF WAR IN THE AIR=
=THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND=
With Illustrations from unusual War Photographs and Sketches. Large
12mo. Cloth. Price $1.35 each.
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON
* * * * * *
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
WHERE BOYHOOD GUARDS FRANCE.
Night in the trenches, showing sentry on duty and occupants of
firing-line snatching a sleep which may be the prelude of death.]
THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND
by
FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
Author of "U. S. Service Series" and "The Wonder of War in the Air"
With Forty-two Illustrations from War Photographs and Sketches
[Illustration]
Boston
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
Published, August, 1918
Copyright, 1918
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
All rights reserved
THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND
Norwood Press
Berwick & Smith Co
Norwood, Mass.
U. S. A.
FOREWORD
The author wishes to point out that in a volume, such as this, which
deals largely with modern war strategy, not a little of the information
which has been placed at his disposal by official sources is not, at
this time, available for publication. For this reason, the tactics
herein presented deal mainly with the larger issues, but it is believed
that a sufficient description of the principles has been given to
make clear the chief wonders of modern land war. For the same reason,
the author has not entered upon controversy with regard to the origin
or the character of the Great War, but has stated only such facts as
are admitted both by the Allies and by the Central Powers. Military
reasons preclude the naming of those officers and officials who have
been especially courteous in giving information and advice, but it
may justly be said that counsel and assistance has been received from
American, French, Belgian, and English sources.
Acknowledgment is made herein of the courtesy of _L'Illustration_,
_J'ai Vu_, _Le Monde Illustré_, _Panorama de la Guerre_, _La Grande
Guerre_, and _Le Miroir_ of Paris; of _Illustrated London News_,
_Graphic_, _Sketch_, _Sphere_, _The War of the Nations_, and _The
War Illustrated_ of London; for the use of illustrations taken from
their publications and being from photographs or sketches made by
their photographers or artists in the field. For the use of official
photographs taken by the Photographic Corps of the armies of France,
Belgium, and England, acknowledgment of courtesy also is made.
PREFACE
Never, in the history of the world, has the courage of the individual
soldier and the skill of the individual officer been so superbly
witnessed as in the Great War. Still less has it ever been that a
general dealt with such mighty forces or was confronted with such
appalling problems of organization. The brain would reel with its
immensity were it not for the fact that the brain grows accustomed to
prodigies, to prodigies of valor, of skill, and of self-sacrifice.
Two great questions stand out paramount in the Great War. It is a
conflict of principles, it is also a conflict of strategies. These two
are interlocked. The strategy that dooms hundreds of thousands to death
recklessly is the result of one principle; the strategy that makes
every soldier a hero and a patriot is based on an opposing principle.
These are hereinafter set forth and tell their own hideous and their
own glorious tale.
War, such as the Great War, has never been before. The changed
conditions did not come suddenly, they came gradually, and each new
death-dealing device was brought about as the result of some disaster
that had gone before. The Siege-Gun explains the fall of Liége, the
weakness of fortifications explains trench warfare, the defense at
Ypres explains the poison gas, and the trench deadlock foreshadows the
tank.
The United States is in the war. It is our war. We must know all
that can be known. We must do all that can be done. We have entered
the war on a high and noble plane, and we must know what are the
fundamental principles at stake. War is neither a gathering of heroes
nor a shambles. It is holy and it is dreadful. It is sublime and it is
sordid. It is so terrible a thing that it can only be pardoned when
its causes are just, even as they are just, noble, and sublime in this
war. To give the boys of the United States a fair viewpoint on this
war, to reveal the great issues involved, to build up a swift-blooded
admiration for the men who have taken their lives in their hands
to defend these great ideals and to prepare our lads for a manhood
in which they shall be worthy of their fathers and of their elder
brothers, to give a deeper pulse to the pride of being an American, is
the aim and purpose of
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
WHERE THE SHELL STRUCK 1
CHAPTER II
THE HEROES OF THE FORTS 44
CHAPTER III
THE CAPTIVE KAISER 86
CHAPTER IV
THE PERILS OF ESCAPE 135
CHAPTER V
THE DISPATCH-RIDER 190
CHAPTER VI
RETREAT! RETREAT! 220
CHAPTER VII
WHERE DESTINY SAID "HALT!" 253
CHAPTER VIII
DIGGING IN 302
CHAPTER IX
THE DEMON FACES 334
ILLUSTRATIONS
Where Boyhood Guards France _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"Please, Colonel, Can't I Join?" 12
A Belgian Boy Hero 26
Smoke, the Herald of Death 38
Armored Train Defending Antwerp 50
Armored Car Harassing Invaders 50
The First Clash 64
Taking Soup to the Firing-Line 76
The Modern Ogre of the Forest 88
The Charge Irresistible 100
A Mammoth German War Car 118
French Cavalry on Patrol 136
Royal Boy Warriors 146
Liquid Fire Projected from the German Trenches 156
Liquid Fire Projected from Portable Reservoirs 156
Boy Heroes of the Front 168
"Our Enemies Showed Great Gallantry" 180
French Infantry Advancing 200
German Infantry Advancing 200
"They Do Not Pass!" 210
"The Veteran's Advice" 210
"We've Got Them Licked, Boys!" 222
The War of Fire 232
Saved in a Hail of Shell 242
Attack on a Stranded Tank 256
The Men Whom No Danger Can Daunt 272
The Endless Line of Motor Convoys 294
The Valley of the Dead 304
Listening-Patrol Trapped by a Star-Shell 314
Locating Enemy Sappers on a Listening-Patrol 314
French Tank Cutting Wire 322
Machine-Gun Dog-Team in Belgium 338
Each Kennel Inhabited by One Wise, Silent Dog 338
Message Dog Wearing Gas Mask 342
The Zouave Bugler's Last Call 348
When Hooded Demons Take the Trenches 356
The Approach of Doom 362
Bringing up Food for the Firing-Line through a
Poison Gas Cloud 368
The Battle of Demon Faces. Flinging Bombs in a
Mist of Green Death 368
THE WONDER OF WAR ON LAND
CHAPTER I
WHERE THE SHELL STRUCK
The windows rattled ominously as the first vibration from the cannon
shook the school.
It was Tuesday, the Fourth of August, 1914.
The master laid down his book and rose. His shoulder crooked forward
threateningly.
"The German guns!" he said.
There was a sharp indrawing of breath among the lads seated on the
forms.
"It is War! Black, treacherous, murderous war!" exclaimed the master,
his voice vibrant with passion. "Those shells, now falling on Belgian
soil, are the tocsin for world-slaughter.
"You will remember, boys," he continued, his tones deepening, "that I
told you, yesterday, how at seven o'clock on Sunday evening, without
any provocation whatever, Germany announced she would invade Belgium
on the false pretext that France was planning an advance through our
territory.
"The dastardly invasion is accomplished. This morning a German force
attacked us at Visé, bombarded the town and crossed the Meuse on
pontoon bridges."
"How can Germany invade us, sir?" asked Deschamps, the head boy of
the school. "You told us, sir, that Belgium is perpetually neutral by
agreement of all the nations of Europe."
"She is so, by every law of international honor, by every pledge, by
solemn covenants sealed and sworn to by Germany herself," came the
reply. "Civilization, humanity, progress, liberty--all the things which
men have fought and died for--depend on the faith of a plighted word.
If a man's gauge and a nation's gauge no longer stand--then every
principle that has been won by the human race since the days that the
cave-man waged war with his teeth crashes into ruin."
"But what shall we be able to do, sir?" asked Horace Monroe, one of the
elder boys.
"We can do what the cave-man did when the cave-bear invaded his rude
home!" thundered the patriot. "We can fight with every weapon we have,
yes, if we have to throw ourselves at the enemy's throat with naked
hands. Such of our troops as we could mobilize at a moment's notice
are ready, but every man who has served his time in training will be
needed. I go to-night!"
"For the front, sir?" asked Deschamps.
"For the cave-bear's throat!"
The room buzzed with an excited whispering.
"Who will take the school, sir?" the head boy asked.
The old reservist looked down at the school, a somber fire glowing in
his eyes. His gaze caught those of his pupils, one after the other.
Some were bewildered, some eager, but all were alight with the response
of enthusiasm.
He put both hands on his desk and leaned far forward, impressively.
"I wonder if I can trust you?" he said.
An expression of wounded pride flashed over the faces of several of the
older boys.
"Not one of you can realize," the master continued, speaking in a
low tense tone which none of the lads had ever heard him use before,
"just what war means. It spells horrors such as cannot be imagined.
It turns men into beasts, or--" he paused, "into heroes. There is no
middle ground. There is patriotism and there is treachery. Either, one
deserves trust, which is honor; or one does not deserve trust, which is
infamy."
He looked at the boys again.
"I wonder if I can trust you?" he repeated.
"Trust us, sir!" shouted a dozen voices.
"Do you dare ask it," he replied, "knowing that any one who fails or
breaks his trust will be a traitor?"
There was a moment's pause, as the master's solemnity sank deep into
the boys' consciousness. Dimly they realized that the issue was
something far greater and graver than anything they had known before.
Horace broke the silence.
"Have we deserved that you should distrust us, sir?" he asked.
The old patriot flashed a quick look at him.
"You are boys, still," he said, "that is all. It is your youth, not
your disloyalty that I fear."
He studied the faces one by one. Each boy returned his gaze frankly and
unflinchingly.
"I will trust you," the master said.
He leaned down to his desk and, with all the lads watching him, wrote
in heavy letters on a sheet of paper that lay on his desk.
"There lack but ten days to the end of the term," the master said, when
he had finished writing. "I am to trust you for that length of time.
You give me your word of honor?"
A chorus of assent greeted him. Not a voice was missing.
"Hear me, then," the old patriot declared, straightening up from his
desk. "As boys of Belgium, born and reared on Belgian soil; as boys
of Belgium, sons of a land that has never known dishonor; as boys of
Belgium, who have worked with me in this little village school of
Beaufays together, I trust you. If any one of you fails in that trust,
let the rest see to it!"
"We will, sir," they answered.
"I go to defend Belgium," said the master, "but I leave behind me a
greater teacher than myself. That teacher is a boy's sense of honor."
He took a thumb-tack from a drawer of his desk and fastened the placard
to the upper part of his chair.
It bore the one word:
PATRIE
"There is your master," he said. "School will meet daily, as usual,
until the end of the term. My chair is not empty while that word
stands there. Let no one be absent. Let none neglect his work. Let the
older lads help the younger. As for your conduct, as for your work--I
have your word of honor. Your Fatherland! Your Home-land! Your Belgium!
There is no more to say."
In the great stillness that followed these words, the roar of the
cannon was clearly heard in the distance.
"The guns, again!" said the master. "School is dismissed until
to-morrow."
The boys filed out silently, despite their excitement, but, once
outside, a babel of questions and exclamations arose. Deschamps' voice
was heard above the rest.
"I know how to handle a rifle, sir!" he said, with eager determination.
The old reservist looked sharply at the lad.
"You have not had your military service, yet," he said.
"I could volunteer," the boy responded. "You said, sir, yesterday, that
if there were an invasion, volunteers would be needed."
"Your mother--" the old patriot began, but Deschamps interrupted him.
"Mother is a Belgian, sir," he said. "She'll understand."
"I was counting on your example in the school," objected the master.
The lad shook his head confidently.
"There's no need of me, sir," he replied. "The fellows will all play
square."
"I hope so," said the master, thoughtfully. Then, knotting his
forehead, he asked, "Who is next in rank after you? Monroe, is he not?"
"Yes, sir," put in the boy named, "I'm next in place."
"That's what I thought. Let me think. You were not born in Belgium,
Monroe, were you?"
"No, sir," responded Horace, "I'm an American."
The master pondered a moment.
"You have no part, then, in this war," he said slowly.
Horace flushed at the implication.
"I gave my word of honor with the others, sir," he said. "You don't
think, sir, that means any less to an American boy!"
The master nodded in satisfaction at the retort.
"I beg your pardon," he replied, as though speaking to an equal, "I am
satisfied."
He locked the school door and gave the key to Horace.
"Come with me to the house, Monroe," he added. "I want to give you some
final instructions."
"Very well, sir," Horace replied.
"Deschamps," the master continued, turning to the head boy, "if you are
really in earnest about volunteering, you had better go home at once
and talk the matter over with your parents. I will call at your house
on my way through the village. If your father and mother agree, you may
accompany me."
"Oh, I'll persuade them to let me go!" announced the lad with assurance.
"And your ambitions to become an artist?" queried his old teacher.
"Belgium first!" Deschamps declared.
The master smiled indulgently at the tone of boyish bombast, but, none
the less, it was evident that he was well pleased.
"Very well, Deschamps," he said, "in that case I will see you in an
hour's time."
"Can't we go with you part of the way, sir?" asked half a dozen of the
smaller lads, clustering around him.
"No," came the decided reply, "most certainly not."
"But we want to see the fun!" piped up one of the smallest boys in the
school.
The master put his hand kindly on the youngster's shoulder.
"Ah, Jacques, Jacques," he said, "pray that you may never see it! I am
sick at heart to think of what may happen to this little village if the
red tide of war rolls over it. Good-bye, boys; remember your trust.
Come, Monroe, we must be going."
Some of the elder pupils stopped to shake hands with their old master,
but most of the younger ones went running in groups along the village
street, with fewer shouts than usual, eager to tell at home the strange
happenings of that day at school. Horace and the master turned toward
the end of the village, the old patriot taking the opportunity to
warn the American lad against allowing the boys to go to extremes in
exercising their new-found responsibilities.
"They are much more likely to be too strict than to be too slack," he
said, "balance and judgment come with age and experience. They will
need the curb, not the whip. I am torn with the idea of leaving the
school when no one knows what may happen, but I cannot stay away from
Liége. Hear how those guns continue!"
"Just what are you going to do there, sir?" asked Horace.
"Whatever I am told to do," was the answer. "A soldier only obeys
orders. I served my time with the artillery and my old battery is at
Fort Boncelles. I hope they will let me go there, but guns have changed
a great deal since my time, and perhaps my experience may be of little
use. Yet the principles are the same, still."
"Does Madame Maubin know as yet that you're going, sir?" asked Horace,
as they neared the house.
"No," said the master, "she does not. Of course, we have talked about
the possible German invasion, but I said nothing which would alarm her.
She will have to be told now."
Like all boys, Horace had a deep dislike for emotional scenes,
especially of a domestic character, and he would have given a good deal
not to be compelled to go into the house, but there was no help for it.
Mme. Maubin had seen them coming, and she opened the door.
"Are those German guns?" she asked.
"Yes," said the master, halting on the threshold.
"Then it is all true?"
"The invasion?" he sighed. "Alas, it is all true."
She turned and walked into the house, the others following.
On a chair, near the window, lay the old uniform.
"Lucie!" cried the master, understanding.
"Did you think that I would fail you," she said, "or try to hold you
back?"
They went into the inner room together.
In a few moments, the woman came out.
"You will drink a cup of milk before you go, won't you?" she asked,
addressing Horace. "M. Maubin tells me that you are going to walk part
of the way with him. You do not go all the way?" she added, wistfully.
"I'd like to, Madame," answered the boy, "I'd love to volunteer. But
they wouldn't let me. You see," he continued, "I'm an American and that
counts me out. Deschamps is going, though."
The woman looked at Horace with a sudden intensity that frightened
him for a moment. He remembered having heard that the master's wife
possessed strange gifts. But she shook herself out of her fixity of
pose and continued,
"And the school is closed?"
"No, Madame," answered Horace, "the school is not closed. M. Maubin has
put the school in our trust."
"In your trust? In the boys' keeping?" she queried. "I don't quite
understand."
Whereupon Horace told the story of the appeal to the honor of the
school and the One Word on the master's chair.
The woman's face glowed with pride.
"I will help you," she said, impulsively, "I will come to the school."
Horace stiffened up.
"Pardon, Madame," he said, "but the master's chair is not empty."
The master's wife smiled at the lad's quick defense of his charge.
"I had forgotten," she said, "it is a trust, yes? Then I will not
come. But perhaps, after school hours, if there are any of the younger
children who need help in their lessons, they may come here? This house
will always be open to them."
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_
"PLEASE, COLONEL, CAN'T I JOIN?"
The Boy Scouts of England, France and Italy have been of invaluable
service during the war.]
At this point, the door of the inner room opened and the master
entered, in uniform. He looked quizzically at his wife.
"I was afraid," he said, "that it would not fit. It is twenty years
since I wore it last. And I am not as slim, dear, as I was then."
"I altered it yesterday," she said, quietly.
"Yesterday we knew nothing!" exclaimed the master, in surprise.
"When the army was finally ordered to the front on Friday," she
replied, "it was not difficult to guess that danger was very close.
And, Jean, if there were danger, I would not need to be told that you
would go."
The schoolmaster put his arm around his wife as he handed her to her
seat at the table.
"Mark you this, Monroe," he said, "and remember it: The strength of a
country is in proportion as its women are strong."
"M. Maubin," asked the lad, as they sat down to their hasty meal,
"before you go, I wish you'd explain to me a little what this war is
about. Being an American, I'm not up on European politics, and I can't
quite make head or tail out of the muddle. So far as I understand,
Austria quarreled with Servia because the Crown Prince was shot by
a Servian. That's natural enough, although it doesn't seem enough to
start a war. Suddenly, Germany invades Belgium. What's Germany got to
do with Servia? And where does Belgium come in?"
The master glanced at his pupil.
"It's impossible to explain the tangle of European politics in a few
words," he said, "but you are right in wanting to know the causes of
the war. I'll put them as simply as I can.
"Every international war in the world's history has been an aggressive
war, waged either to win new territory or commerce, or to take back
territory or commerce which had been wrested from its former owner.
Very often, this indirect but real cause is cloaked by some petty
incident which looms up as the direct cause, and, not infrequently, the
antagonism of one nation to another has a powerful effect. Civil wars,
on the other hand, are generally due to money conditions."
"Was our American Civil War due to that?" Horace asked.
"Yes," the master answered, "it was due to the disturbed balance
of economic conditions between slave-holding and non-slave-holding
States."
"And was our Spanish-American War a war of aggression?"
"Certainly, on the part of Cuba. The Cubans tried to shake off the
yoke of Spain and possess the territory for themselves, and Spain, not
altogether unnaturally, resented America's sympathy with the rebels."
"And this war?" asked Horace. "Is it for commerce or for territory?"
"For both," the master answered. "The main, though indirect, cause of
this war is Germany's need for commercial expansion. The direct cause
of the war is Austria's desire for revenge on Servia's plotting against
her, which, in its turn, grew out of Austria's theft of the territory
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"In this war, not only are great empires opposed, but two great
international principles also are opposed. Belgium, France, and
England hold the belief that international affairs can be regulated by
honorable agreements, as between gentlemen. Germany holds the belief
that international affairs can be regulated only by force, as between
ruffians.
"Germany has always proclaimed the doctrine of 'blood and iron' or
the policy that 'might makes right.' In accordance with this belief,
Prussia has built up the greatest army the world has ever seen. She
has done more, she has made militarism a part of the very fiber of the
German soul. It is not the Mailed Fist which rules Germany, it is the
Mailed Fist which is Germany. The Kaiser's Army, for the last dozen
years, has been coiled like a snake, watching its chance to strike.
"Austria-Hungary is a ramshackle empire. Her people are disunited.
Only one-third of her people are of Teutonic stock, though Austria is
German in her rule. More than one-half of the population is Slav. The
empire is a mass of disorganized units held together by force and since
Austria lacks this force, she is compelled to depend on German force
as an ally. Hence, whatever is done by Austria entangles Germany and
Austria cannot take any action without Germany's permission."
"So that is where Germany comes in!" exclaimed Horace. "I begin to see,
now."
"Next," continued the master, "consider Servia, a country about half
as large again as Belgium. She gained her autonomy, under Turkey, a
century ago. At the end of the Russo-Turkish War, by the Treaty of
San Stefano, a strip of territory inhabited by Servians was given to
Bulgaria. The Treaty of Berlin, supported by all the European Powers,
declared Servia's independence but did not return the territory. For
years Servia had struggled to get an outlet to the sea and when,
after a sharp war, she succeeded, Austria opposed her and was backed
by Europe. A Servo-Bulgarian war followed, in which Austria again
intervened.
"In 1908, Austria, without rhyme or reason, annexed the great
territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been put under her
protection by the Treaty of Berlin. This act of national dishonor
almost precipitated a European War. To Servia's ambitions it was a
death-blow, for it placed Austria between her and the sea. The result
is that Servia harbors a grudge against Austria which is not less than
her hatred for her old master, Turkey."
"No wonder Servia was spoiling for trouble," said Horace, thoughtfully.
"Unfortunately, she was," the master agreed. "The Pan-Serbs, who think
Servia ought to include Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Old Servia, have long
been a thorn in Austria's side. The Austrian emperor, himself, in an
address from the throne, stated that 'the flame of the hatred of Servia
for myself and my house has ever blazed higher,' and he declared--not
without reason--that 'a criminal propaganda has extended over the
frontier.' It must be remembered, however, that this propaganda was
Austria's fault, for she tore up the Treaty of Berlin in 1908 just as
Germany tore up her treaty with Belgium the day before yesterday.
"Just a word, Monroe, about the 'balance of power.' In order for Europe
to live at peace, no one nation or group of nations must be allowed to
get too strong. Since Germany and Austria are allies, other nations
must form defensive alliances, and one of the strongest of these was
between France and Russia."
"Why those two?" queried Horace. "They're not neighbors."
"No," the master replied, "but they are both neighbors of the Central
Powers. France seeks revenge from Germany for the Franco-Prussian War
of 1871, when Alsace-Lorraine was taken from her. Russia could never
cope single-handed with the military forces of Germany and Austria. If,
however, the Germanic powers attacked either France or Russia, by this
alliance they would be confronted by an enemy on the opposite frontier."
"So when Russia had to back up Servia," said Horace slowly, "France had
to back up Russia. Is that it?"
"Exactly. Now, see where England stands. By a naval agreement with
France, the British possessions in the Mediterranean are watched over
by a French fleet. The English Channel, which commands the north shore
of France, is patrolled by a British fleet. On Saturday last, three
days ago, England assured France that, in the event of trouble with
Germany, she would protect French interests in the English Channel and
the North Sea. This bottles up the German fleet. That, you see, my boy,
is where the nations stand. Now let us come to the actual beginning of
the war."
Horace redoubled his attention, leaning forward with one elbow on the
table.
"On June 28, five weeks ago," the master continued, "the heir to the
throne of Austria, the Grand-Duke Francis Ferdinand, together with his
wife, were shot and killed by a Servian student. The crime occurred
in the streets of Serajevo, capital of the province of Bosnia, which
Austria had wrongfully annexed six years before. Austria claimed that
the assassination was part of a plot known to the Servian government,
but this charge was denied and has never been proved.
"For three weeks there were no outward signs of a storm. Probably the
time was spent by Austria and Germany in arranging the details of
war. On July 23, Austria sent an outrageous and peremptory ultimatum
to Servia. That little country, realizing that the assassination had
placed her in a false position, acceded to all Austria's demands save
one, which she could not yield without giving up her own sovereign
rights."
"Which, I suppose," interjected Horace, "she wouldn't do. No country
would."
"The ultimatum," continued the master, "only gave Servia two days' time
to reply. This haste was for the purpose of forcing the issue before
the other Powers could take action. Russia, the next day, asked Austria
to give Servia more time. Austria, in consultation with Germany, told
Russia to keep 'hands off.' It was clear, then, that Austria intended
to use the assassination as a pretext to gobble up Servia in the
same way that she had gobbled up Bosnia and Herzegovina six years
before. Russia commenced to mobilize her army to help Servia, if help
were needed. The Austrian army was already mobilized on the Servian
frontier."
"Just what is mobilization, sir?" asked the boy; "I've heard the word
used so much during the last few days."
"Mobilization," answered the master, "means getting ready to move.
It means the organizing of an army, bringing troops from distant
garrisons, artillery from concentration points, arranging food depots
from which provision trains can be run regularly, munition depots to
feed the guns, preparation and equipment of hospitals in the field and
at the bases, wounded transportation and ambulance systems, stables,
forage depots and veterinary stations for the cavalry and artillery
horses, repair shops for military machinery, supply depots for uniforms
and equipment, and a thousand other things besides. Each of these must
interlock and have its place. Each one must move along a route, mapped
out in advance and by a time-table as rigid as that of a railroad.
A modern army on the march is a segment of civilization on the move
and almost every department of human industry is represented. The
mobilization and handling of an army is the most staggering problem of
organization known to the human race."
"One never thinks of all that," said Horace, thoughtfully.
"To proceed with the events that led to war," the master continued,
looking at his watch and speaking more quickly. "On July 25, Austria
notified Servia that she was dissatisfied with the reply to the
ultimatum. This was equal to a declaration of war. The next day,
Russia, seeing Germany's hand behind the Austrian plot, warned the
Kaiser that interference would not be tolerated. This declaration from
Russia imbroiled her ally, France. Belgium, being required to keep an
army of defense on her frontier, commenced to mobilize also.
"The very next day, July 27, the Austrians invaded Servia. At almost
the same hour, shots were exchanged between German and Russian sentries
on the frontier. On July 28, war began between Austria and Servia.
Great Britain, at this time, was striving with might and main to keep
the war from spreading and had urged both Germany and Russia to keep
the peace.
"On July 31 Germany forced the European War by simultaneous action at
two points. She sent an ultimatum to Russia, ordering her to cease
mobilization within 12 hours. She sent an ultimatum to France demanding
neutrality and asserting that she would require the keys of the French
fortresses of Verdun and Toul as guarantee of that neutrality."[1]
"By what right?"
"None in the world! It was impossible for Russia to demobilize, with
her neighbor and ally Servia already under the fire of Austrian guns;
it was equally impossible for France to hand over the keys of her main
defensive positions to her arch-enemy.
"On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and advanced her army
to striking distance of the Belgian frontier. On August 2--that was
the day before yesterday--German troops crossed the French frontier at
three points and invaded Luxemburg, an independent state. That evening,
Germany notified Belgium that she intended to violate her neutrality."
"Why is Belgium supposed to be neutral? Can't she go to war? Isn't she
an independent country?"
"She is," was the reply, "but her war-making powers are withheld by
the universal agreement of the Powers. Belgium is the key to Western
Europe. Peace depends on Belgium's good faith. According to a treaty
signed in 1839, we form 'an independent state of perpetual neutrality,'
this treaty being signed by France, England, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Germany declared that
this Belgian treaty could not be violated. In 1911, Germany repeated
the assurance and again in 1913. All the while she had drawn maps for
the invasion of Belgium and had built military railways to threaten our
frontier.
"Germany has always stated that it was a matter of honor with her to
keep Belgium intact. Those guns you hear, Monroe, mark Germany's denial
of her national and international honor. History, with all its dark and
bloody deeds, has never seen a more dastardly flaunting of disgrace and
treachery. Observe that Germany had invaded Luxemburg, invaded France,
invaded Belgium, declared war on Russia, and authorized Austria to
invade Servia before a single hostile act had been committed by Russia,
France, Belgium, or England.
"The Kaiser's armies count for victory on speed and surprise. For that
reason, every day, yes, every hour that we can hold them back before
Liége, gives Belgium and France the opportunity to prepare, gives the
world a breathing space. Every minute counts, and that is why I am
going to join the colors!"
"I wish I could go," pleaded Horace, as the master rose from the table.
"It is impossible," the master replied, "belonging to a neutral nation,
it would not be permitted. The United States may be dragged into the
war later--there is never any means of telling how long such a war may
last--and then, perhaps, you will be called on. And now," he continued,
"if you will step outside for a minute, I'll join you there, and we'll
go on to Deschamps' house."
Realizing that the master wished to bid farewell to his wife, Horace
put on his cap and waited in the village street. The master joined him
in a few minutes and they walked along silently. At last the reservist
spoke.
"I wonder," he said, musingly, "if I will ever see Beaufays again."
Horace was startled. This was bringing the war home to him with a
vengeance.
"You don't mean that you think--" he stammered.
"That I may be killed?" queried the master, calmly. "Certainly. That is
all War consists of--killing and being killed. Why should I expect to
escape? One always hopes, of course."
For a few significant moments nothing more was said.
Deschamps' father and mother were standing at the door as the master
and Horace approached. As they reached the gate, the would-be recruit
came swinging out. He turned and kissed his father on both cheeks. His
mother clung to him passionately.
"You will take care of him, M. Maubin?" she pleaded.
"Madame," he answered, "Belgium must take care of him. He is his
country's son, now, not yours or mine."
His father said only,
"Shoot straight, my son!"
When, on the Friday before, the seventeen men in actual service in the
Belgian Army who lived in Beaufays had marched from the little village
to join the colors, there had been a certain air of martial gayety.
This evening, however, the groups of villagers who passed the master
and the two boys looked grave.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "J'ai Vu."_
A BELGIAN BOY HERO.
Twice decorated by King Albert for service at the front and for
discovering dangerous military spies.]
One of the men, a hunchback, very powerful in build despite his
distorted frame and who was known as the cleverest man in the village,
came shuffling up beside them.
"You are going, M. Maubin?"
"It is evident."
"And where?"
"My old regiment is at Boncelles," the reservist answered, "I hope to
be allowed to join it. They will know, at Liége, where I can be of the
most service."
"Reynders and Vourdet also are going. They leave to-morrow," the
hunchback said, naming two of the older villagers.
"It would be better, M. Croquier," rejoined the master, "if they went
to-night."
"Why?" queried the other, in response, as he kept beside the three, his
shambling gait keeping pace with their brisk walk. "You don't think a
day will make any difference, do you, M. Maubin? Our good forts will
keep the Germans back for a month, at least. Brialmont declared they
were impregnable."
"Maybe," said the old patriot, "and maybe not. Brialmont's plans were
made twenty years ago. This lad and I will help to keep the invaders
back to-night. The Germans are prepared, we are not. Every rifle
counts."
"I will see Reynders and Vourdet at once," the hunchback answered,
eagerly. "They shall hear what you have said. Perhaps they, too, will
go to-night. Good fortune!"
"Good-bye!" the master said.
The old reservist and the two boys, one on either side of him, passed
the outskirts of Beaufays and struck out upon the road leading into
Liége. It was a glorious evening, after a sultry day. The roads were
heavy with dust, but a light breeze had sprung up.
Here and there a home with a little garden nestled beside a
swift-flowing brook. The magpies flickered black and white among
the thickets. The crows cawed loudly of their coming feast on early
walnuts, not knowing that the plans of the German General Staff were
providing for them a fattening feast on the horrid fruits of war. The
crops were ripe for harvest. All was peaceful to view, but a sullen
shaking vibration at irregular intervals told the cannons' tale of
destruction and slaughter. Little, however, did any of the three
realize that the smiling landscape was already ringed with steel or
that the road they trod would, on the morrow, shake with the trampling
of the iron-gray German hosts.
"I told them at home," said Deschamps, breaking the silence, "that you
said every one would be needed. Why is there such a hurry, sir? Can't
our regular army hold the forts?"
"No," said the master, "I am afraid not, because the Germans are
counting on speed and surprise. They must take Liége and they must take
it quickly."
"I don't see why," the lad objected. "Can't the Germans march either to
the north or south of Liége and avoid the forts altogether?"
"They can, of course," the old reservist answered, "but that wouldn't
do them any good. It is a question of the Line of Communication. An
army is composed of human beings. First and foremost it must be fed.
Remember Lord Kitchener's famous address to the Punjab Rifles:
"'You must not get into the way of thinking,' he said, 'that men can
go on fighting interminably. Men get hungry, men get thirsty, men get
tired. In real warfare, where many hours of hard marching and fighting
may pass before you achieve success, you have to ask yourselves at the
critical moment:
"'Can I trust my men, with gnawing pains of hunger in their stomachs,
with a depressing sense of having suffered casualties and with fatigue
in all their limbs; can I trust them to press upon the retreating enemy
and crush him? Men cannot fight well unless they are fed well, and men
cannot fight when they are tired. More than once on active service, I
have taken the ammunition out of my ammunition carts and loaded them up
with bully beef.'
"I could go on and point out to you that troops must be properly
sheltered and properly equipped. Even without any battles, an army will
have a considerable proportion of its men in hospitals from sickness,
and, after the first battle, there are thousands of wounded to be
surgically treated and nursed. What is true of men is true also of the
horses for the cavalry and artillery; they cannot advance unless they
are fed, nor when they are tired.
"Moreover, a modern army fights mainly with gunnery and rifle fire,
very little with cold steel. Guns and rifles are useless without
ammunition. Machine guns will fire 30,000 shots in an hour. Both light
and heavy artillery depend for their results on continuous hammering.
For every step in advance that troops make, they must be followed with
food for the men, food for the horses, and food for the guns.
"Think, boys, of the size of a modern army. One single army corps of
two divisions of three brigades each, contains over 43,000 combatants.
Of this, over one half is infantry, the rest including the machine gun
sections, the field artillery, the heavy artillery, the siege artillery
and engineering and signal corps. It takes 9,000 non-combatants in
the field to look after this army, the train including ten provision
columns, with special field bakeries and field slaughter-houses, ten
ammunition columns, twelve field hospitals, to say nothing of special
bridge sections and a host of minor but essential units. Picture to
yourselves the amount of food which has to be transported to feed these
52,000 men three times a day, most of which has to be brought from
long distances to the front and there cooked and distributed. Conceive
the thousands of tons of cartridges and shells needed to supply the
infantry and the various kinds of artillery!
"The Line of Communication is the only thing which keeps an army
going, which enables it to operate. If that be cut, the guns are
silenced and the army starves. It is absolutely imperative to every
advancing army that its rear, its Line of Communication, be safe from
attack by the enemy. It is the artery which carries its life-blood. You
can easily see that, for such an immense transportation work, control
of the railways of a country is the first chief need of an invading
army. No wagon system could provision an army or keep it supplied with
munitions.
"Liége is Belgium's eastern railroad center. Six miles north of the
forts of Liége lies the frontier of Holland. South of Liége lies the
broken, mountainous country of the Ardennes, uncrossed by railways and
impossible as a line of transport. Troops could only march through the
difficult Ardennes country if they were sure of being able to secure
supplies when they had reached the other side.
"Certainly, Deschamps, as you suggest, the German Army could divide and
march by roads north and south of Liége. Suppose it did so. What then?
After the main army had passed, we could sally forth from Liége, cut
the Line of Communication and, by starvation and lack of ammunition,
compel the surrender of the whole invading army.
"No, boys, not only must the Germans enter Liége, but they must capture
every single fort before it is safe for them to proceed. Not until the
last gun is silenced in Forts Loncin, Flemalle and Boncelles is Western
Europe threatened. When Liége falls, Belgium falls, and if the fall
comes too quickly, the whole of Western Europe may go."
"But will Liége fall?" asked Horace.
"That," answered the master, "is what we are going to see."
He held up his hand for silence.
"The shots are coming nearer," he said.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the ground shook with a
heavy detonation and both the boys staggered.
"That was not a German shell," declared the old reservist; "that was
one of our forts replying."
"Fort Embourg?" queried Deschamps.
"Undoubtedly." He turned to the younger lad. "You will have to go back,
Monroe," he said. "If Liége is already in a state of siege, you have no
right to enter the ring of forts."
"Can't I go at least as far as Embourg?" begged Horace. "You might let
me see one shot, sir."
"I only hope you won't see too many," answered the master, "but, if
you're so keen about it, you may come as far as the ring of forts. At
the cross-roads leading to Tilff, you must turn back."
"By Mother Canterre's bakery?"
"Exactly," said the master, smiling a trifle grimly. "But you need not
expect to buy any little cakes there, now that the guns of Embourg have
begun to reply. You may be sure that Mother Canterre has been sent away
into safety. The forts must be left clear."
"I wish I were like Deschamps," declared Horace, enviously, "going
right into the very thick of it!"
"I'm not so sure that Deschamps will go 'into the thick of it,' as you
call it," responded the old reservist; "a raw recruit is not likely to
be sent direct to the fighting front. It is much more likely that he
will be sent back to cover Brussels or Antwerp."
"But if we are defending ourselves and there is such need for haste,"
said Deschamps, "why do I have to enlist as a soldier at all? Why
can't I just take a rifle and join in?"
The master listened intently to the explosion of a bursting shell some
distance away, before he replied.
"It is one of the recognized rules of war," he said, when the sound of
the shell-burst had died away, "that battles are fought between the
armies of opposing countries, not between the civilian populations of
those countries. A civilian, not in uniform, who is caught in the act
of fighting with the enemy, is treated as a spy and shot. The Germans
even refused to recognize the organized French _franc-tireurs_ in the
war of 1871.[2] True, the Hague Convention permits an invaded people to
take up arms to defend itself, but it is not likely that Germany will
pay any attention to the rules of civilized warfare, even though she
signed them.
"Treaties mean nothing to the Kaiser's government, which has declared,
'the State is a law unto itself,' and again, 'Weak nations have not
the same right to live as stronger nations,' and yet again, 'the State
is the sole judge of the morality of its own actions.' Massacre
and barbarism lie behind Germany's announcement that 'if a single
non-combatant in a city or village fires a shot against occupying
troops, that city or village shall be considered as having rendered
itself liable to pillage.' That means, Deschamps, that if you should
fire a single shot in defense of your own home, before you join the
army, the Germans would deem that a sufficient excuse for burning and
sacking the entire town of Liége."
A shell screeched over them, exploding on the further side of a small
hill to their left.
The master looked startled, but neither of the boys showed any signs of
fear.
"Is that what a shell sounds like?" asked Horace curiously. "I thought
it was much louder."
The master cast a sidewise glance at him.
"Have you ever seen a large shell burst?" he asked.
"No," responded the boy.
"After you do," the old reservist commented, "you will feel
differently."
Another shell, not quite as near, whistled behind them.
"They may hit us!" exclaimed Deschamps, with a nervous laugh, the
incredulity in his tone revealing how little he realized his danger,
nor the devastation wrought by a modern shell.
"Go back, Monroe," said the master, quickening his steps.
Horace kept step by step beside him.
"You said I might go to the corner," he protested; "it's only a little
way further."
From over the hill came drifting a smell of acrid smoke.
"Do you think I'll see--" began Horace.
An earth-shaking detonation cut short his words, and, in the early
dusk, the flash and the cauliflower cloud of smoke could be seen
arising from the fort.
"We're replying," cried the old patriot, elation in his voice. "Wait
till they come within range of our 6-inch guns!"
A turn of the road brought them within direct sight of Fort Embourg.
"Look!" cried the master, "they're going to fire again!"
The boys halted.
As they looked, from the smoothly-cropped grass mound slowly arose an
enormous steel-gray mushroom, like the dream of some goblin multiplied
a thousandfold. Then, suddenly, without a sign or sound of warning,
this dome belched flame and smoke, rocking the earth around. Then down,
down sank the grim gray mushroom, leaving no mark of its presence save
the green mound on which, the day before, sheep had been grazing, and
the drifting puff of smoke overhead.
The exhilaration of the boys dropped. There was something terrible and
malign in the slow rising of that goblin dome, in its sudden ferocity
and in its noiseless disappearance.
"That shell will strike several miles away," the old reservist said,
"perhaps where men are now fighting. If so, then you have seen a burden
of death, of suffering and of carnage starting on its way. War is a
horrible thing, boys, a horrible thing! But," he added sadly, "it is a
necessity from which the world will never be free."
A hundred yards farther brought them to the cross-roads.
"Here you must go back, Monroe."
Horace looked wistfully at the quiet road ahead of him, winding
peacefully under its green cloud of trees.
"I've never been in a war," he said. "I do want to see a little bit of
this one!"
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_
SMOKE, THE HERALD OF DEATH.
A 12-inch howitzer behind the British lines on the Somme, smashing the
German lines several miles away.]
"Count yourself happy," said the old reservist solemnly, "for every
hour of your life up to this time that has been free from sight or
sound of war. You--"
A crash and a flare!
A blast of fire struck the boy in the face and all became blank.
Then, slowly, slowly, out from a black void, Horace felt his
consciousness struggling back. It was as though his brain were a jagged
mountain which his mind was trying to climb. With an inward panic, he
opened his eyes.
He found himself in a clump of bushes, stunned and dazed. Gropingly he
passed his hands over his face.
His eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, scorched away by the flame. There
was a smell of singeing on his clothes. A terrific nausea possessed
him, caused, though he did not know it, by the vacuum produced by the
shell-burst. Otherwise he was unhurt.
Painfully and with a strong feeling of unreality, the boy staggered to
his feet and looked around him.
In the road was a deep hole, upon which a cloud of dust was slowly
settling. The air still seemed to rock backwards and forwards with the
vibration, and the falling leaves whirled irregularly to the ground.
But--where were the others?
For the moment, Horace lost his nerve.
"Where are they? Where are they?" he screamed, his high-pitched cry
rasping his blistered throat.
Then,
"Steady, Monroe," he heard a voice behind him. "You will need all your
courage."
Horace turned at the words.
The master was kneeling at the side of the road, beside Deschamps, who
was stretched out limply, the blood oozing from a wound in his forehead.
The sight steadied Horace at once. He got a grip on himself, though he
was still dizzy and sick with the shock of the shell and his head was
ringing painfully. One ear seemed deaf. A black giddiness seized him as
he crossed the road with staggering, uncertain steps.
"Is he killed?" asked Horace.
"No," answered the master, "but badly hurt. His wound will need instant
attention. Unhinge a shutter from the cottage over there."
Running with stumbling steps to the deserted bake-shop, Horace lifted
from its hinges one of the long shutters and dragged it back to where
his comrade lay.
"Put him on this," said the master softly.
Together they lifted the would-be recruit and laid him gently on the
shutter, then picked up the burden, the master taking the head and
Horace the feet.
"Where to, sir?" asked Horace, as he took a firm grip on the improvised
stretcher.
"To Embourg Village," was the reply; "we must find a doctor at once."
They had not gone another two hundred yards when the screech of an
approaching shell was heard.
"Put him down," cried the master, "and lie down flat yourself!"
Horace did not delay. Gently, but rapidly, he lowered his end of the
stretcher and laid himself flat on the bed of the road. He had hardly
touched ground when a shell hit a house not more than eighty yards in
front of them. The boy saw the great shell, like a black streak, just
before it struck. Then, even before he heard the explosion, he saw the
whole house lift itself into the air, quite silently.
"Put your fingers in your ears!" cried the master.
Horace saw the gesture but the words were lost in a terrific roar which
projected the air in waves which seemed almost solid as they struck.
In the place where the house had stood there remained only a rising
column of brick-dust, rosy red. Above this towered a petaled cloud of
black smoke, and above this, again, a fountain compounded of particles
of the house, of earth, and of shell driven upwards by the force of the
explosion.
Horace no longer felt any eagerness to see shell-fire. He was
thoroughly frightened. A look of panic had crept into his eyes. Not for
the world, though, would he have admitted it. He did not try to speak.
His throat was parched and the roof of his mouth was dry.
They picked up the stretcher in silence.
"Here is the doctor's house," said the master, as they entered the
village, and, turning, met the young surgeon on his way out of the gate.
"Patient for you, Doctor!" said the master.
"Father will attend to him," came the reply, "I'm hurrying to Liége.
They need me there. What is it? Accident case?"
"Shell splinter," said the master.
The doctor halted and turned back.
"Already!" he exclaimed.
Horace and the master carried their burden into the house, the doctor
following them.
"I'll look at him," he said, "and let Father dress the wound. He hasn't
practiced for ten years, but every medical man will have to work now,
I'm thinking."
They laid Deschamps on the operating table.
Quickly and deftly the young surgeon unwound the bandages which the
master had tied around the wounded lad's head, and examined the injury
carefully.
Then he reached for his instruments.
"He will be blind," he said, "totally blind, without hope of recovery."
"He was to have been an artist," said the master.
"Yes," replied the surgeon. "War is made up of broken lives!"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The master could not have said this in 1914, for the secret
documents were not made public until 1918. The author makes him say it,
here, to show the political moves clearly.
[2] Later in August, 1914, Germany declared that the Belgian Garde
Civique would be considered as non-combatant. It was therefore
dismissed, though afterwards reformed.
CHAPTER II
THE HEROES OF THE FORTS
The whistling shells burst over Fort Embourg, near by, with
ever-increasing frequency, while the surgeon, oblivious to their
menace, worked over the wounded boy. The vibrations of the 6-inch guns,
as the forts replied, shook the house, but no one flinched or spoke
while the doctor busied himself with his patient. At last, having
rebandaged the wound, he stepped back and said,
"There, now, I think he'll do."
"Where shall we take him, Doctor?" queried the master. "There isn't any
hospital in Embourg, nor in Beaufays, and Liége will have sufficient
problems to face in taking care of its own wounded."
"The boy can stay here," the doctor replied. "Father will treat him and
Mother will do all the nursing necessary."
He looked off into the distance with lowered eyebrows.
"If all comes true that people have prophesied about the terrors of
modern war," the surgeon continued, thoughtfully, "it's likely that
every woman in Belgium will have to become a nurse."
"Couldn't I stay and help to take care of Deschamps, sir?" asked Horace.
"No," the master answered, "you're within the zone of fire as it is.
You must return to Beaufays without delay."
Horace would have protested but that he knew the master's words were
not to be gainsaid.
"Did you say that you were on your way to Liége?" asked the doctor
abruptly, turning to the old reservist.
"Yes," was the reply.
"Let us go together, then," the doctor said, "for Belgium will need my
case of surgical instruments as much as she will need your rifle. Wait
a moment until I call Father."
He returned a minute or two later accompanied by a small and withered
but keen-eyed old man, whom he introduced to the master and Horace, and
to whom he described with technical detail the injuries suffered by the
lad who was still extended, motionless, on the operating table.
"Very well, Hilaire," answered the old man, in a high, reedy voice,
"leave the patient to me, my son. I have not forgotten all that I once
knew. Not yet, oh, no!"
He turned to the master.
"My son, Monsieur, my son!" he said, paternally. "It is something of
which we may be proud, is it not, when our children carry on the work
which we have begun?"
The old man patted the young surgeon on the arm, talking garrulously
the while.
"A good boy, Monsieur, a good boy," he said. "I was the first to teach
him, but he has outstripped me. Then, too, his wrist has the steadiness
of youth, while mine--"
He held out a shaking hand.
"But the brain is clear still, Monsieur," he went on, "do not fear.
Your pupil shall have the best of care."
He walked feebly to the operating table. There, his whole figure
changed. Unconsciously his back straightened, his hand ceased to
tremble, and, as he bent over the patient, his eyes narrowed with the
penetration that they must have borne twenty years before.
The master observed him closely.
"The lad is in good hands," he said, in a low voice; "come, let us go."
He turned to the aged physician.
"Monsieur," he said, "I feel it is an honor that we of the older
generation can still serve Belgium. The first young victim of this
war is in your keeping. I--" he paused, "I have no children, only the
children of my school. It is my child, therefore, Monsieur, that I
leave with you."
"He shall be as a child of mine," the old man answered.
Father and son embraced and the little party of three left the doctor's
house.
At the gate the master paused.
"Monroe," he said, "you must get back to Beaufays as quickly as you
can. Try to be there before it is altogether dark. Lose no time, but do
not go by the road. Strike south across the fields from here until you
come to the river (Ourthe), then follow the banks as far as the road
from Tilff, whence it will be safe to take the Beaufays road."
"Why do you suggest such a roundabout way?" asked the surgeon. "The
lad won't escape danger by making a circuit. Shells drop anywhere and
everywhere. You can't dodge them by taking to the fields instead of the
road."
The reservist shook his head.
"There you are wrong, Doctor," he said. "How many shells have fallen in
Embourg Village? None. Yet we are but three-quarters of a mile from the
fort. It is only in the immediate neighborhood of the fort that there
is danger. Strange though it may seem to say so, I could wish that
shells were dropping in the village."
"Why?" asked the surgeon sharply.
"Because," the master rejoined, "it would demonstrate that the Germans
do not possess the exact range of the fort. Their very accuracy proves
that they do. For that reason, at a distance of half a mile from the
fort, the lad will be safe. Nevertheless, Monroe," he added, "if you
should hear a wild shell coming in your direction, throw yourself flat
on the ground. The burst of an explosion is always upwards."
"I'll be careful, sir," answered the boy.
"Will you please tell Mme. Maubin that I went on to Liége in the
company of Dr. Mallorbes? Say that I do not wish her to come and see
Deschamps, for I am sure she will wish to do so, and give as my reason
that the road running below the fort is not safe."
"I will tell her, sir," said Horace.
"You will also inform the school to-morrow about Deschamps," the
master continued. "It is a matter of pride to Beaufays, I feel, that
Belgium's first wounded boy hero should be a lad from our own school.
And so, good-bye!"
"Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Dr. Mallorbes," responded Horace.
He hesitated a moment, as though he would have said something more,
then plunged across the fields, as the master had bidden him, back to
the little village of Beaufays.
The two men watched him for a moment, until his figure was lost in the
shadows of the wood on the other side of the field, then set their
faces for Liége and--it might be--death.
"I am a good deal disturbed," the doctor began, as they swung out upon
the road, "by your suggestion that the Germans possess the exact range
of our forts. Where could they get the information?"
"Spies," the master answered. "Belgium is honeycombed with them, has
been for years. You know--all the world knows--that Germany spends
millions of marks yearly on her secret service system and nearly all
her agents are military spies. The exact location of our forts cannot
be hidden. It is not a secret. They are plain to see. What is easier
for a spy than to search the neighborhood of a fort thoroughly, perhaps
on a Sunday morning walk, to find some well-hidden position for a gun
of a certain caliber, and to calculate, to the last inch, the exact
distance of that position from the fort? It is simplicity itself."
"What of that," said the doctor, "when the gun itself is not there?"
"But when the gun is there!" the master retorted. "When the invasion
is accomplished, think of the advantage which such information gives!
There is no need to send out scouting parties to bring back estimates
of distances; there is no need to waste energy, time, and ammunition
in trial shots, during which time the battery might be subjected to
fire from the guns of the fort. None of that. Secretly and silently,
probably during the night or behind a screen of cavalry, a howitzer may
be dragged up to the place selected by the spy and marked in detail on
a large scale map. The officer commanding the battery knows the exact
direction in which the fort bears and has already worked out the exact
angle of elevation for the range. He has nothing to do but to order the
aim and elevation and to fire, knowing, in advance, that his shells can
fall nowhere but on the fort itself. It is not marksmanship, it is
mathematics."
[Illustration: _Belgian Official Photograph._
ARMORED TRAIN DEFENDING ANTWERP.]
[Illustration: _Belgian Official Photograph._
ARMORED CAR HARASSING INVADERS.]
"You think this has been done with the forts at Liége!" ejaculated the
doctor.
"That is evident," was the reply. "See, this is a night bombardment.
There are no advance posts, no aeroplanes to report back the results of
gun-fire. Yet the German shells are falling on the forts with deadly
precision, falling on forts which the gunners have never seen. I doubt
if there is a single fortified place in Belgium of which the Germans do
not possess accurate plans."
"Then you think they will break through?"
"We cannot hope to prevent it," the master answered. "The Kaiser's
generals would never attack Liége unless they were confident of
success. Since they know exactly what we possess for defense, they
would not be sure of success unless they knew that they possessed an
infinitely stronger force of attack."
"But I have heard that the forts of Liége were impregnable!"
"They were when they were built," the master answered, "but that is
twenty years ago. Against the guns of that period, notably the 6-inch
howitzer, they were impregnable, for every possible gun-position for a
weapon of that range was covered by the guns of the fort. But if pieces
of heavier power can bombard the forts from positions outside the range
of the fortress guns, then impregnability is gone. You must remember,
Doctor, that the power of a gun increases as the cube of its caliber or
diameter of its bore. Thus a 12-inch gun is not twice as powerful as a
6-inch gun, but eight times as powerful."
"Are there such heavy guns?"
"There are," was the answer. "Field guns of 8.4-inch and 10-inch
caliber are known to exist, and the German War Party is reported to
hold the secret of still more powerful engines of destruction, of
which, as yet, the outer world knows nothing."
"Look, you, M. Maubin," said the surgeon, "you seem to know quite a lot
about these things, while I've concerned myself mainly with my medical
books and haven't paid much attention to military affairs. Explain to
me, if you will be so good, the significance of this contest between
the fortifications of Liége and the new German guns."
"It is the death-grapple which will decide the fate of Belgium--perhaps
that of Europe--within a week," the master answered. "Its outcome will
settle the greatest military controversy of our times. One way or the
other, it will change the face of war forever. This question is whether
modern artillery has become so powerful that no permanent masonry
fortification can resist it. If so, the development of two thousand
years of fortification must be thrown aside as useless and defense must
become mobile.
"Liége is what is known as a ring fortress, that is, the city itself
is not fortified but it is ringed round with twelve forts, between
two and three miles apart from each other and averaging a distance of
five miles from the city. Thus the forts form a circumference of 32
miles, so arranged that if any one fort is silenced the cross-fire of
the forts on either side controls the gap. Six are forts of the first
order, Pontisse, Barchon, and Fléron on the north and east, Loncin,
Flemalles, and Boncelles on the west and south. The other six are
fortins or small forts, like Embourg."
"Are they strongly armed?" the doctor asked.
"Moderately so. They have modern guns, though not of the largest
caliber. There are four hundred guns in all the forts combined, mainly
6-inch and 4.7-inch guns and 8-inch mortars. The big 9-inch guns,
which were ordered from Krupp's for delivery more than three years
ago, have never reached us. We see, now, that Germany would not allow
them to be delivered. She did not intend to run the risk of invading a
well-armed Belgium."
"But isn't a 6-inch a fairly big gun?"
"Not for permanent works," the master replied. "The United States
has two 16-inch guns in her coast defenses and there are plenty of
12-inch guns in permanent fortifications. Naval guns, of course, are
bigger. They have to be. You can't 'take cover' at sea and long ranges
therefore are necessary. Modern super-Dreadnoughts,[3] armed with
15-inch guns, regard their 6-inch batteries as merely secondary.
"Our principal weakness," he continued, "is that Brialmont's full
design of infantry trenches and sunken emplacements for light
artillery has never been completed. Besides, our army is in a state
of transition, as you know, for it is only a year and a half since a
new system was put into operation. That makes it difficult for us to
mobilize quickly, while Germany has been completely mobilized for some
time."
"Still," responded the doctor, trying to find some hope in the outlook,
"we have the advantage of being on the defensive. I've read, somewhere,
that it takes three times as many men to drive an attack as to hold a
line of defense."
"That is true," agreed the master.
"They can't be more than three to one," said the doctor, "so as fast as
they come, we'll smash them."
"Perhaps we might have a better chance," the old reservist said,
doubtfully, "if General Leman and our Third Division were here. But
it's not the German soldiers of which I'm afraid, but these new
howitzers."
"Why?" asked the doctor. "Isn't a howitzer a gun? What's the difference
between them, anyway?"
"I'll show you the difference in a minute," the master replied, "but I
want, first, to give you a clear idea of one of our big forts, so that
you can realize the problem that the Germans must tackle. Each of the
six main forts around Liége is built in the form of a triangle, each
is placed in a commanding natural position, and each, in addition, is
approached by a steep artificial mound, in the interior of which lie
the works of the fort. At the top of the earth slope, the edge drops
suddenly into a deep ditch, of which the counterscarp is a massive
masonry wall topped with wire entanglements. The entire earth slope and
wall is exposed to the guns of the fort, throwing shrapnel, and to fire
from machine guns and rifles."
"Before the Germans get a footing in the fort, then," said the doctor,
"they will have to storm a stretch of ground absolutely riddled with
fire."
"They will."
"That means a heavy loss of life."
"A terrible loss of life," the master agreed. "Moreover, even should
they advance in such masses that we could not kill them fast enough and
thus they should storm the slope and win the ditch, they would be in a
still worse plight. Powerful quick-firing guns, mounted in cupolas at
each angle of the triangle, sweep the sunken ditch with an enfilading
fire. No troops could live through such an inferno of bullets.
"On the main inner triangle is the infantry parapet, shaped somewhat
like a heart, pierced for rifle fire and with machine-gun emplacements
at the angles. In the hollow of that heart-like space rises a solid
central mass of concrete, on and in which are the shelters and gun
cupolas. The mortar cupolas rise from the floor of the hollow, outside
the central mass. These are invisible to the foe until raised by
machinery within, when they command the entire neighborhood and can
fire their 6-inch shells in any direction."
The doctor rubbed his hands briskly.
"If that's the way our forts are built," he said, "and if they are well
provisioned and have plenty of ammunition, we ought to be able to snap
our fingers at the Kaiser. All we have to do is to wait for the Germans
to come and shoot them down by thousands. They'll go packing back to
Germany quick enough if we give them a reception like that."
"Perhaps," said the old reservist, "but you have forgotten about the
howitzers."
"Why, yes, so I had," the doctor answered, more gravely; "you were
going to tell me about them."
"The difference in principle between a gun and a howitzer or a mortar,"
explained the master, "is that a gun depends for its destructiveness
on its striking velocity, while a howitzer depends on the power of the
exploding charge of its shell. An armor-piercing shell, fired from a
15-inch naval gun, will go through the heaviest and hardest steel
known, because of the terrific speed at which it travels, with a muzzle
velocity of three thousand feet a second or thirty-four miles a minute.
In order not to lose speed, therefore, it must travel in as straight a
line as possible. In other words, a missile from a gun must have a long
low curve or trajectory."
"Yes," said the doctor, "I can see that."
"A howitzer, on the other hand," the master explained, "does not
require any more velocity than just to carry the high-explosive shell
to the point designed. Moreover, in order that their terrible effects
may be the more destructive, mortars and howitzers drop their shells
from overhead upon the object of fire by lobbing them up in the air
with a very high trajectory. A howitzer generally looks as though it
were shooting at the moon. It can be placed in a valley and fire over
the hill. But, as you can see, its range is restricted. A naval gun
throwing an 8-inch shell may have a range of sixteen miles, while the
8-inch howitzer operates best from three or four miles away.
"You see, Doctor," he continued, "if our defenses have been
constructed upon the basis of attack from heavy field-guns and light
howitzers--which is the system of most European armies--if our energy
has been spent on disappearing cupolas and sunken masonry works which
will resist gun-fire, is there not a terrible danger if we are attacked
by heavy howitzers, dropping high explosive shells from overhead? To
such shells it will make no difference whether the cupolas be raised or
lowered.
"If it be true," the old reservist added, his voice rising with a note
of presage, "if it be true what is whispered about these new German
siege howitzers, then destruction will rain upon the forts of Liége as
though the skies were a mouth of flame.
"Perhaps never before, in the history of the world, has so much hung
upon the range and power of a modern weapon. We await the eruption of a
man-forged volcano which may engulf us all in its fiery lava."
The doctor passed his hand over his face and looked up unconsciously,
half in fear as though the doom was on them.
"You make it very ugly," he said.
The master paced on through the late dusk, a glow from the distant
gunfire mingling with the faint starlight on his face.
"It matters very little if the End be ugly," he replied, "so long as
the road be that of heroism."
The two men walked silently some little space, each following the trend
of his own ideas, until, where the road branched off to Chénée, two men
joined them.
"Have you any late news?" the master asked.
"The Ninth Regiment has been ordered forward between Fléron and
Chaudfontaine," said the older of the newcomers, "and the Fourteenth is
to be sent here, to cover Embourg and Boncelles."
"And you--where do you go?"
"To report," the stranger answered; "there will be work enough for us
all to do."
"Have you any idea of what numbers we will have to face?"
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe one army corps, maybe two--maybe all Germany. Who knows?"
Darkness closed down upon Liége, the darkness of that August Fourth,
such as even that ancient city had never known, a somber pall of shadow
pierced with vivid streaks from the flaming fortress guns. Powerful
searchlights hunted the countryside with their malevolent eyes. Death
screamed and screeched in the trees. The horrible and cruel work of
war hid its unloveliness that first night in the shelter of the woods
surrounding the eastern forts of Liége.
The four men soon reached military headquarters. Already casualty
cases had begun to arrive and Dr. Mallorbes was promptly assigned to
one of the hospitals. The two reservists from Chénée were sent to the
shallow trenches defending the approaches to Fort Chaudfontaine, and,
at his earnest request, the master was allowed to join his battery at
Boncelles.
When, however, the master found himself actually in the fort and under
military discipline, much of his pessimism passed away. He fell,
naturally, into the fatalism of the soldier, and, as he remarked the
extraordinarily powerful machinery and defenses of the fort, said to
his neighbor,
"They're counting on our not being ready. But everything here seems up
to the minute!"
His fellow-gunner, also an old reservist who had served with the
battery before, chuckled as he answered,
"Our silent general has fooled them. General Leman has reached here
with the Third Division."
"But the Third was at Diest, eighty miles away, the day before
yesterday!" exclaimed the master.
"It is here now, and taking up positions. And the Germans, for all
their spies, don't know it. They'll try to rush the forts to-morrow,
expecting to find them lightly held, and then we'll pepper them finely."
"How many men does that give us here at Liége?" the master asked.
"About twenty-two thousand."
"And the Germans?"
"Three army corps, probably; a hundred thousand men, at least,[4] and
as many more as they like to bring."
"And all confident of breaking through?"
"Quite," said the other, nodding. "There was a young German officer
captured yesterday at Visé who jeered at the mere idea of our daring to
oppose them.
"'It is the idea of little children that Belgium can resist,' he said.
'In two days we take Liége, in a week we are before Paris. It is all
arranged. It is like a time-table. Nothing can prevent victory.
Nothing will stop us. If any one hinders, we will roll them into the
sea.'"
"Time-tables have been disarranged before now," said the master
thoughtfully, "and it is worth remembering that the more rigid is the
organization the more hopeless is the confusion when something goes
wrong."
"If we can check them here--"
"Then," said the master, "they will never get to Paris."
So, under the plucky but inadequate fire of their forts, the 22,500
Belgians awaited the attack of 120,000 Germans. They knew, those
heroes, those martyrs to the ideals of honor, that Germany had untold
millions to roll up against them, should their resistance prove to be
an obstacle.
It was almost dawn when the first attack began at Evegnée and Barchon.
There, the sentries on duty, watching the hillsides opposite to them,
saw what seemed to be an undulation of the earth, as though the soil
were heaving like the sea. As the morning light cleared the mists away,
these waves were seen to be vast bodies of infantry, their iron-gray
uniforms indistinguishable against the dawn-lighted grass.
Came a sharp order to fire.
Red mouths of death opened. From trench[5] and fort, rifle-fire ran its
crackling harmony to the crash of the 6-inch guns and the insistent
rattle of the ear-rasping machine gun. In this hideous repertory of
noise, the Hotchkiss machine-guns, used in the forts, and the Berthier
guns, used by the infantry and drawn by a dog team, joined their
concert of destruction.
It was no discredit to the German soldiers that they fell back. No one,
neither General von Emmich, his officers, nor his men, expected to find
the Belgian trenches so strongly held. The check was only momentary,
however, merely long enough to allow the face of the hills to grow a
little brighter, long enough to show clearly to the gallant defenders
the tremendous odds they had to face.
The iron-gray masses of the German infantry advanced stolidly into that
maw of death. It was unlike all the parade conceptions of battle. There
were no flaming colors, no horses curveting around a golden-tasseled
standard, no blare of bands, none of the pomp and panoply of war. Only,
above the hills which circled the forts, rose the slowly deepening
rose of the dawn; only, on the ground below, crept the steady ant-like
advance of thousands of men who would be dead before the rising sun had
risen.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Panorama de la Guerre."_
THE FIRST CLASH.
Belgians with the dog-drawn machine guns, disputing the invasion of
their country by the hordes of the Hun. Note the open warfare without
cover or trenches.]
"As line after line of the German infantry advanced," wrote a Belgian
officer, when describing this first day's fighting, "we simply mowed
them down. It was all too terribly easy, and I turned to a brother
officer of mine more than once and said to him,
"'Voila! They are coming on again in a dense, close formation! They
must be mad!'
"They made no attempt at deploying, but came on, line after line,
almost shoulder to shoulder, until, as we shot them down, the fallen
were heaped one on top of another, in an awful barricade of dead and
wounded men that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble.
"I thought of Napoleon's saying--if he ever said it, and I doubt it,
for he had no care of human life--
"'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!' (Magnificent! But it
is not War!)
"No, that plunge forward of the German infantry that day was not war,
it was slaughter--just slaughter.
"So high became the barricade of dead and wounded that we did not know
whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our
hands. We would have liked to extricate some of the wounded from the
dead, but we dared not. A stiff wind carried away the smoke of the guns
quickly, and we could see some of the wounded men trying to release
themselves from their terrible position. I will confess I crossed
myself and could have wished that the smoke had remained!
"But, would you believe it, this veritable wall of dead and dying
actually enabled those wonderful Germans to creep closer and actually
charge up the glacis (slope of the fort). Of course, they got no
further than half way, for our Maxims and rifles swept them back. We
had our own losses, but they were slight compared with the carnage
inflicted on our enemies."
No, it was not war that day, it was slaughter.
What did this waste of life mean? What reason, what excuse could there
be which would justify the reckless sacrifice of men against the
gunfire, the machine-gun-fire and the rifle-fire of the forts of Liége?
There is only one answer. General von Emmich, Commander-in-Chief of
the Army of the Meuse, had been entrusted with the task of breaking
through Liége quickly, at all hazards. Everything must be made
subservient to speed. The loss of a few thousand men would not cripple
Germany. The loss of a few days spelled failure.
Counting mainly on the element of surprise, for it was only thirty-four
hours before that Germany announced her intention of violating
neutrality, the Army of the Meuse was traveling light. It had not been
hampered in its onward drive with the heavy siege guns. Those monsters
were being laboriously dragged on to Namur, as lighter guns, it was
thought, would suffice to reduce Liége, taken as it was by surprise.
Moreover, Von Emmich knew that General Leman and the Third Belgian
Division had been far away the day before. Every hour, undoubtedly,
brought them nearer; every hour rendered the element of surprise less
valuable. Wherefore, as an advocate of the German theory of war which
declares that any place can be rushed, no matter how strongly defended,
if the attacking force be large enough and sacrifice of life is not
counted, Von Emmich hurled his men forward ruthlessly and regardlessly
into a revelry of carnage.
If Germany was staggered at her dead, the commander of the Army of
the Meuse did not show it that day. From morning until evening the
iron-gray infantry charged, were mown down, fell back and charged
again. Wave after wave of men swept up those slopes, never to return.
The human tide seemed endless. For not one moment, in all that day,
did the billows of soldier victims cease to pound forward to their
bloody doom; for not one moment, in all that day, did the Belgians,
though with smoke-bleared eyes and dropping from exhaustion, fail to
answer. Since morning there had been no respite, not even for a meal.
At evening, the piles of German dead and wounded rose five feet high in
long lines over the rolling landscape.
When night fell upon the Fifth of August, German power had suffered a
severe blow. That first day's fighting of the war in the west had shown
that 22,500 Belgians, though hastily mobilized, could hold back 120,000
Germans, prepared to the last detail. It disproved, forever, the German
theory that masses of men can overcome machine-gun-fire by sheer weight
of numbers. It displayed that the German system of firing from the
hip, instead of from the shoulder, resulted in bad marksmanship and
a reckless waste of ammunition. It revealed that the German soldier
fights with dogged and relentless driving force in a mass, but is weak
as an individual and will not face cold steel. Most important of all,
it shattered the reputation of the Kaiser's generals for infallibility
and of the Kaiser's army for invincibility.
The first day's fighting was a German defeat. That, at least, stood
out clear. To cap the triumph, two Belgian counter-attacks had been
successful. German outposts were scattered by an assault on the
heights of Wandre, the Garde Civique cut up and practically destroyed
an attacking force near Boncelles, while the Belgian Lancers covered
themselves with glory when, with one squadron, they charged upon six
squadrons of German cavalry and put them to rout.
On the other hand, this one day's conflict justified the German theory
of the power of high-explosive shell against permanent fortifications.
The bombardment continued all day and all night without cessation.
With an army of only 22,500 men, there was no relief. Every man was on
continuous duty. It was evident from the first that the forts finally
must fall, for the attacking 8.4-inch howitzers fired from points out
of reach of the fortress guns and the destructive force of their shells
was such that it gradually but surely reduced the strongest armor-steel
and concrete masonry to ruins.
Yet, although the forts were doomed, they were not destined to
immediate fall. The Germans had miscalculated. They had not deemed
it necessary to bring their biggest siege guns to the demolition of
Liége. Indeed, they could not spare them. Those monstrous behemoths
of ordnance could only crawl, even when dragged by thirteen traction
engines, and they were needed at Namur, which the Germans rightly
expected would be defended by the French Army and would be a harder nut
to crack.
A full moon rose on the night of the Fifth of August, revealing the
artillery duel in savage continuance. At the end of nearly twenty-four
hours' fighting, the master, at his post of duty in Fort Boncelles,
was at the point of exhaustion. He realized that age was a serious
handicap. Though as full of spirit and fire as the younger men, the
physical stamina would hardly bear the strain. He winced at every
shell that struck, and, though his watchfulness was as keen and his
ardor not abated, the frame was breaking down.
The commander of the fort, himself well on in years, touched the old
reservist kindly on the arm.
"It is the courage of the old which stirs the young," he said. "To be
able to give the last flare of our spirits to our country--ah, that is
worth while."
But he found a corner where the old patriot might snatch a few hours'
troubled sleep.
In order that the Belgian troops might not have a chance to rest, Von
Emmich made feint after feint all through the night. The exhausted
and harassed Belgians were rushed from point to point to fill in the
defense as best they could. It was cruel, driving, killing work, when
the muscles clicked from sheer fatigue and the men moved leadenly as in
a dream. Under such overstrain, men could not last, but every hour of
delay meant ruin to Germany and gain to the Allies.
During the night, more and more German guns were put in place, and by
the morning of August 6, several score 8.4-inch howitzers were hurling
their shells directly on Forts Fléron and Evegnée. When daylight
broke, Evegnée was a ruin and the Belgian infantry had fallen back. At
eight o'clock, one of the huge shells shattered the gun machinery of
Fort Fléron.
General Leman ordered the retreat of the Belgian army from its advanced
position, realizing that it was absolutely impossible to defend a line
33 miles long with an exhausted army, now reduced by losses to 18,000
men. He summoned his officers to a military council to lay down the
new dispositions on the farther side of the Meuse, under cover of the
western forts.
Suddenly, during the council, the general was startled by loud shouting
and the sounds of a struggle outside. Knowing that the Germans were
hammering at the gates of the city and that Fléron had fallen, he
feared an advance cavalry patrol. He ran down-stairs and out of the
door, to find himself confronted by eight men in German uniform.
The general darted back.
"A pistol!" he cried.
The Germans surged forward to seize the general, a crowd of Belgian
civilians behind. They did not dare to touch the invaders, knowing that
any effort would be deemed a "hostile act by non-combatants" which
would afford excuse to the Germans for making reprisals.
With a quick movement, General Leman slipped sidewise past his would-be
captors, the crowd opening to let him through. The Germans plunged into
the crowd after him, but a brother officer of the general caught up
his chief bodily and slung him over a neighboring wall, which chanced
to be the boundary of a foundry yard. At the same instant, the rest of
the officers who had been at the council came clattering out. Swords
flashed out. Three of the Germans were killed and, some members of
the Garde Civique being attracted by the commotion, the rest were
made prisoners. They were found to be spies, who had secreted German
uniforms and arms in a house next door to military headquarters, with
this very intention of capturing the Belgian commanders in a moment of
surprise.
With the withdrawal of the troops from the advance trenches, the
holding of the eastern forts became an impossibility. Thus, on
receiving news of the retreat, Major Mameche, the Commandant of Fort
Chaudfontaine, the strategic value of which lay in its controlling
the entrance to the Chaudfontaine railway tunnel, blocked the
tunnel by colliding several engines at its mouth and then fired his
powder-magazine, blowing up the fort.
Towards midday a message was received from General von Emmich,
demanding the surrender of the city. The civil authorities were
willing, in order to save the city from destruction, but General Leman,
as Military Commandant, curtly refused to abandon the forts. He was
fighting for time. Already two days had passed and only one of the six
larger forts had fallen. To France and to England--which had entered
the war because of Germany's violation of Belgium--every day gained
then was worth a week later.
A panic followed upon General Leman's refusal, citizens who feared
the results of the bombardment of the city jamming every out-bound
train. Every possible influence was brought to bear on the Military
Commandant. His only answer was,
"The forts must hold."
At 6 o'clock that evening a slight bombardment began, not enough to
damage the city seriously, but heavy enough to denote the fate that
would come to Liége if a destructive bombardment were undertaken.
Steadily, with the persistence of final doom, the high-explosive shells
dropped their volcanic furies upon the doomed forts. The continuous
hail of bombs served a double purpose, not only wrecking the forts
themselves but breaking down human resistance in the defenders.
On the morning of August 7 a small party of Germans appeared in front
of the fort of Boncelles, and carrying a white flag.
"I don't trust them," growled the master.
"Oh, come," said his comrade, "that's a little too strong! Even the
Germans wouldn't be so dishonorable as to violate a flag of truce.
That's respected even by savages who fight with assegai and shield."
"I'm not so sure," was the master's reply, but he went with the party
of twenty which sallied from the fort to receive the surrender of the
Germans.
Suspiciously the Belgians approached, for the master's incertitude was
shared by several of the men, but, as they came near, the Germans held
up their hands.
"Kamerad!" they cried, in token of surrender.
Instantly, as though the throwing up of the hands had been a
prearranged signal, a murderous cross-fire from the woods on either
side was poured upon the advancing Belgians. Only seven of the twenty,
the master among them, returned to the fort alive.
The commandant of the fort was livid with rage, and the Belgian
infantry in the shallow trenches near by, in a crisis of fury, charged
the woods with infinitely inferior numbers and slew every lurking
German found there. No quarter was given that day.
Meanwhile, through the gap in the defenses formed by the fall of Forts
Fléron and Evegnée, the Germans advanced into Liége. They occupied the
town without opposition, and yet--and yet--five of the great forts
remained unsilenced. The unique capture of a city when its defenses
were still untaken was only possible because the Belgians, for
patriotic reasons, did not wish to fire upon the town. Fort Barchon,
one of the eastern forts, isolated from the new line of defense, fell
later in the day.
Into the city poured the iron-gray masses of the German troops, but the
satisfaction of the rank and file was not shared by the officers. They
knew the truth of failure. It was the third day, already, and Forts
Pontisse, Loncin, Flemalles and Boncelles were still holding out.
Moreover, if the little Belgian army had defied them on a long line, it
would be still better able to do so when holding a line only a third
as long and reënforced by fresh troops. Von Emmich was savage, and his
savagery showed itself later. True, he was in Liége, but that did him
little good. Brussels and Paris were not far away, but Fort Loncin
protected the main railway line to Brussels and Forts Flemalles and
Boncelles defended the main railway line to Paris. The path was not yet
clear.
[Illustration: _British Official Photograph._
TAKING SOUP TO THE FIRING-LINE.
Dangerous duty, for the bearer cannot lie down on the approach of a
shell. Note bags of grenades carried in case of surprise.]
General Leman's army, with its numbers brought up to 36,000 men by
reënforcements, now formed a dangerous menace to the advance. The
Belgian general had out-maneuvered the German commander at every
turn, and, in taking up a position on the farther side of the Meuse,
he was prepared to make things still hotter for the invaders. He was
not trying to stop the progress of the army but had concentrated his
energies on the defense of the forts, for he knew that, as long as the
forts stood, the German Army dared not debouch into the plain, leaving
behind it an imperiled line of communication.
The German enveloping movement now extended northward to Fort
Pontisse, bombarding it, however, from the eastern bank of the Meuse.
For field-gun fire, however, the forts were well protected and there
were no hidden positions available for the 8.4-inch howitzers. If the
Germans were to take Pontisse, they must cross the Meuse. Over and over
again they stormed the crossing, fighting like madmen. Ten pontoon
bridges, one after the other, were built across the river in the face
of an appalling gun fire, but, each time, the fortress guns succeeded
in destroying them and those troops which had crossed were cut off and
killed to a man.
Similar flanking strategy was attempted to the south, where Fort
Flemalles was attacked, also from the eastern bank of the river. Here,
after several hours of sharp fighting, the Germans secured a landing
on the western bank, but could not bring over any heavy artillery. The
little army of defense contested every foot of ground with reckless and
gay bravery, and the larger howitzers were compelled to remain on the
eastern side of the river.
Fort Boncelles, as the Commandant himself was heard to describe it,
was "like the stoke-hold of hell." It had no river to support its
defenses. All the forts to the east of it, save Embourg, had fallen,
allowing a terrific concentration of enemy artillery. On the other
hand, the ground around Boncelles was well adapted to the sweep of
the larger fortress guns. If there was the slightest pause in the
German attack, a cupola would rise and send a storm of shrapnel into
the enemy's ranks. Then the tempest of death would sweep down upon
Boncelles once more. Von Emmich was in Liége with 120,000 men, but
little Belgium shook her fist in his face and he dared not go on.
The demolition of the forts began on August 13. On that day, the heavy
siege guns (two, it is believed), which the Germans had not intended to
bring into action against Liége, entered the city and crawled through
it to take up positions against the western forts. So affrighting were
these engines of war that the German artillery did not attempt to
operate them. They were handled by mechanics from the Krupp factory,
the artillery officers merely working out the ranges.
Prior to this time, such guns had never been dreamed of save in
artillerists' nightmares. The weight of the great German siege gun is
71 tons. It is transported in four pieces, each part being dragged by
three traction engines on caterpillar wheels, a thirteenth and larger
engine going ahead to test the road and to assist each section in
going up hills. The caliber of the gun is 16.4-inch (42-centimeter).
The shell stands as high as a man's chin and weighs 1684 pounds.
The percussion fuse is of mercury fulminate, which in its turn
explodes nitro-glycerine, which explodes picric-acid powder, thus
giving the bursting charge to the terrible force of an explosion of
tri-nitro-toluol, one of the most destructive explosives known. About
280 pounds of this inconceivably powerful destructive is contained in
the shell.[6]
Nothing so terrible had ever before been seen in war as the effect of
these great shells. Men were not simply killed and wounded, they were
blackened, burnt, smashed into indistinguishable pulp of bone and flesh.
When these engines of devastation arrived, General Leman knew that the
end was near. Although severely wounded three days before, his spirit
knew no thought of surrender. In Fort Loncin with a handful of men,
he awaited the bombardment which could mean nothing but death. The
fall of Fort Loncin was described by a German infantry officer who was
attached to the Army of the Meuse.
"General Leman's defense of Liége," he wrote admiringly, "combined all
that is noble and all that is tragic.
"As long as possible, he inspected the forts daily to see that
everything was in order. By a piece of falling masonry, dislodged by
our guns, both General Leman's legs were crushed. Undaunted, he visited
the forts in an automobile. In the strong Fort Loncin, General Leman
decided to hold his ground or die.
"When the end was inevitable, the Belgians disabled the last three guns
and exploded the supply of shells kept in readiness by the guns. Before
this, General Leman destroyed all plans, maps and papers relating to
the defenses. The food supplies also were destroyed. With about 100
men, General Leman attempted to retire to another fort, but we had cut
off their retreat.
"By this time our heaviest guns were in position and a well-placed
shell tore through the cracked and battered masonry and exploded in the
main magazine. With a thunderous crash, the mighty walls of the fort
fell. Pieces of stone and concrete 25 cubic meters in size (as big as a
large room) were hurled into the air.
"When the dust and fumes passed away, we stormed the fort across ground
literally strewn with the bodies of troops who had gone out before
to storm the fort and never returned. All the men left alive in the
fort were wounded and most were unconscious. A corporal, with one arm
shattered, valiantly tried to drive us back by firing his rifle. Buried
in the débris and pinned beneath a massive beam was General Leman.
"'Respect for the general! He is dead!' said a Belgian aide-de-camp.
"With gentleness and care, which showed they respected the man who had
resisted them so valiantly and stubbornly, our infantry released the
general's wounded form and carried him away. We thought him dead, but
he recovered consciousness, and looking round, said,
"'It is as it is. The men fought bravely.'
"Then, turning to us, he added,
"'Put in your dispatches that I was unconscious.'
"We brought him to our commander, General von Emmich, and the two
generals saluted. We tried to speak words of comfort, but he was
silent--he is known as the silent general.
"'I was unconscious. Be sure and put that in your dispatches.'
"More he would not say."
Fort Boncelles disputed with Fort Loncin the honor of being the last to
fall. It is not known, definitely, which of the two resisted longest.
The night before the fall of Fort Loncin, the electric-lighting system
of Boncelles was destroyed. The men--the master among them--fought all
night through in utter darkness, groping for the machinery of their
guns and in momentary expectation of suffocation and death from the
German shells.
The high-explosive charges tore and shattered the armor-steel and
masonry as though they had been cardboard, and shortly before dawn,
wide breaches in the walls showed the peaceful starlight shining
through. Though the fort was a wreck, three guns were working still.
A fragment of shell struck the master. He fell.
His comrade, dropping to one knee beside him, heard the dying man
whisper,
"Take this to my wife!"
The comrade reached his hand to the designated pocket, took out the
little packet, put it inside his tunic and returned to his gun.
An hour after sunrise a shell tore through the rear cupola of Boncelles
and plucked it up as a weed is torn up by its roots. The German officer
who was directing the attack offered to accept a surrender.
The Belgian commandant answered,
"We have still two guns to fight with!"
Only one shell more fell on Fort Boncelles, but it landed full in the
middle of the ruined structure, and was one of the shells from the
11-inch howitzers. The inner concrete walls fell to dust, pieces of
armor-steel and gun shelters were hurled a quarter of a mile away and
both the remaining guns were silenced.
Eleven men remained to surrender the fort, not one of them unwounded,
all nearly crazed with the endurance of nine days and nights of the
most terrific bombardment known to man. Dazed, deaf and exhausted to
the verge of insanity, they were brought before their captors. Only
three were able to speak, one of them the master's comrade.
"What have you there?" asked a junior officer, as the Belgian feebly
resisted search.
A German soldier snatched the packet from his tunic.
"Only a message from a comrade," the Belgian mumbled, his words thick
with collapse.
The officer opened the packet, ran his eye through the letter, looked
at Mme. Maubin's photograph, and, with a contemptuous exclamation,
tossed the photograph and letter into a little stream that flowed by
the roadside.
The Belgian, enraged at this callous action, for the moment forgetful
of his wounds and the lassitude of prostration, lurched forward to
seize the officer's throat. He was promptly seized, and, as he was held
there, almost swooning, a captive and unarmed, the officer drew his
pistol and shot him dead.
In this wise the Germans took Liége.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The _Queen Elizabeth_, under the British flag, the most powerful
vessel at the opening of the war, carried eight 15-inch guns and
sixteen 6-inch guns as an auxiliary battery.
[4] General Von Emmich's advance force, irrespective of reserves, was
120,000 men.
[5] This does not mean the trench of modern trench warfare, but the
old-fashioned shallow rifle-pit.
[6] These figures are not official, but are careful estimates from
known facts by leading artillerists of the Allies.
CHAPTER III
THE CAPTIVE KAISER
When, on the night of that first bombardment, Horace Monroe struck
across the fields to take the river path homewards, the boy's spirit
thrilled with a keen eagerness for the future. To his very finger-tips
he seemed to be a-quiver with life. Action and the clacking blare of
the cannonade heightened his sensations.
Death had come near to him but it had not made him afraid, rather it
had given him a sense of exultation. He was still partly deaf from the
shock of the shell-burst and to his memory was continually returning
the scene of Deschamps lying on the Embourg road, the blood trickling
from his forehead.
"It's hard luck for Deschamps, though," he muttered to himself, "to be
put out of everything, without even having seen the fighting!"
This, the fact that his chum had been debarred from participation in
the Great War which seemed to be bursting over his head, loomed up to
Horace as far more lamentable than the wreck of his chum's life and the
ruin of his ambitions to be an artist.
The footpath by the river, as the master had premised, was well
protected. The Ourthe ran swiftly at the bottom of a wooded gully and
the path closely followed the windings of the stream. The shells,
Horace thought, would scarcely reach him there. The boy's mind,
however, was not running on personal danger, but he was reviewing the
tangled skein of circumstances which the master had explained to him as
forming the cause of the war.
Ah!
From far away came a sound like the crushing of tissue-paper, which
rapidly deepened and angered into a high droning hum suggestive of a
hurricane of flying hornets.
A shell!
Facing it alone was a very different matter from when he had been with
the master. In a flash the boy realized the value of companionship in
peril.
Choking suddenly in panic and with a prickling sense all over his body
as though the blood had gone to sleep and would not run in his veins,
Horace threw himself down on the soft ground. The shell seemed to be
coming straight for where he lay. The air quivered like a violin-string
across which a demon-bow was drawn. One--two seconds passed, each
apparently an hour long.
Then--a flash!
The shell had fallen on the other side of the river.
A frantic desire urged Horace to leap to his feet and run on, but his
legs refused to obey.
"My legs are cowards," said Horace, half aloud, "but I'm not. I'm going
to get up."
Yet he lay there, and lay there for some time. It was fear, and he
recognized it, but the cool, moist earth of the forest was very
welcome. His forehead was hot and he rested it against the mulch of the
fallen leaves.
Another shell buzzed in the distance.
Again the soft swish, again the loud hum and again the deafening crash,
this time within the little valley of the river itself. Stones and
earth flew in every direction. The boy could hear them snitch through
the trees. He flattened himself closer to the ground.
With a certain tranquillity he watched the cloud of dust settling,
not sure whether his inward quietness was the regaining of control or a
certain numbness of the senses. Gradually he realized that it was the
former. This was the fourth shell which had struck quite near him and
he was still unhurt.
[Illustration: _French Official Photograph._
THE MODERN OGRE OF THE FOREST.
Mammoth French howitzer, well camouflaged in a dense wood.]
A strange sense of safety took possession of the boy. If four shells
had missed him, why not forty, why not four hundred?
With that thought, the strange fiber of life which welds will and
muscle into action resumed its course, like a wire when electric
contact is made, and Horace, ere he was aware, leaped to his feet and
found himself walking along the path again.
Where the shell had struck, he stopped. The hole was twenty feet
across. Dust was still sifting through the trees and the tearing
radius of the steel splinters could be traced in the riven and mangled
branches overhead.
Then, in his new spirit of confidence, Horace laughed aloud.
"How could I be killed now?" he said aloud. "I've got those messages to
deliver. A chap can't stop to think about himself when he's got a job
to do!"
Although he did not realize it, the lad had passed his baptism of fire,
had learned the first great lesson of the battlefield--that only those
things happen which are fated.
He broke into a smooth, easy run. The cloud lifted from his thoughts,
the weakness from his body. A wonderful lightness and ease possessed
him, a joy, an exaltation. Life took on new values. He had fought out
his battle with himself, by himself, alone in the woods by the river,
his teacher a high-explosive shell.
Again he heard the soft swish in the air, but, this time, the sound had
a different character. Horace paused before throwing himself on the
ground for safety, for the sound did not grow louder. It came nearer,
however, rustling like the flutter of great wings.
Certainly it could not be a shell.
Nearer and nearer came the uncertain fluttering sound until it
was directly overhead, and Horace, looking up, saw two amber eyes
glittering in the fast-falling dark.
The pinions of the creature beat hard but with quick irregular strokes
which failed to sustain the body, and down, down it came, striking
ground heavily almost at the boy's feet.
The instinct of the chase welled up in the lad and he stretched out a
hand to seize, but the bird sprang upwards from the ground, dealt him a
blow in the face with its powerful wing and threw him headlong. At the
same time, it cluttered away through the bushes.
Thoroughly roused, now, Horace dived into the undergrowth after the
bird. The huge creature turned and faced him, with a vicious croak.
A flash from one of the guns of Fort Embourg lighted up the scene.
Boy and bird faced each other, and, when he saw his opponent, the lad's
pulse beat quick and high.
It was an eagle, a black eagle from the forest of Germany!
Was it a symbol? Was this a personification of the ravening invader?
He, Horace, had seen the first boy victim of the war; he, Horace, would
make the first prisoner. He set his determination to the task.
The baleful amber eyes followed the boy as he maneuvered round in
the deepening dark. Horace feared for his face, for he knew that the
eagle's method of attack would be an endeavor to peck his eyes out. In
the faint light that remained, the bird's wings gave it the advantage,
even though the fluttering fall suggested injury.
The boy slipped off his coat.
Advancing imperceptibly, inch by inch, until he felt that he was
within reach, suddenly Horace threw himself forward, holding his coat
outstretched before him as he fell with all his weight on the eagle.
The rending beak and talons of the savage bird entangled in the
yielding cloth. Horace, dragged over the ground by his captive's
struggles, felt blindly with his hands until he grasped the creature's
neck.
"I meant to strangle it, then and there," said Horace, when telling the
story afterwards, "but when I got hold of the neck, I found I couldn't
choke it because of the layers of cloth. All my squeezing didn't seem
to do any good. Then I thought that it might be more fun if I brought
him in alive, but it was a tussle!"
The struggle lasted long and, before the bird was mastered, its talons
had scored the boy's thigh. None the less, he succeeded in pinning the
fierce beak and talons into the coat and tying the sleeves together in
such wise that the bird was tightly nipped. Thus triumphant, he set out
with his capture. It was not long until he reached the Tilff road and
turned off towards his home.
The flickering light from the flaming streaks of the guns of Fort
Embourg gave the outlines of the village houses a queer look of
unreality and Horace received a sudden shock.
How long was it--how many days, how many weeks--since he had passed by
the school in that walk to Liége in the twilight? Not, surely not the
same day, only three hours before! Three hours! Yes, three hours of
experience, more than three years of untroubled boyhood life.
He had gone out of Beaufays seeking, as a matter of excitement, to
see something of the war. He returned, one who had been under fire,
a bearer of war tidings, ready to fight for Belgium. He had learned,
besides, the soldier's fatalism which keeps him from flinching because
of the belief that he will not be shot as long as he has his work to do.
From the task of notifying the parents of Deschamps he shrank.
If only his father were there! Horace was proud of his father,
regarding him as the ideal of what he would like to be himself. It was
one of his greatest sorrows that his father spent only half his time
in Belgium, where he represented the interests of certain American
manufacturers. He was expected back on the first of September, but that
was nearly a month away.
On his way through the village, Horace met Croquier, the hunchback. He
told his news.
"And what's queer about the bird," he said, "is that it seems to have
one wing shorter than the other."
Croquier stopped dead.
"Is it the left wing?"
Horace thought for a moment.
"Yes," he answered, "I think it is."
"Show!"
Cautiously the boy loosened his grip, and, in the light from the guns,
displayed his prize.
The eyes of the hunchback burned. He caught the lad eagerly by the arm.
"But you must tell Mme. Maubin at once!" he cried. "At once!"
"Why?" protested Horace, hanging back.
"She must know. She is the wise woman!" the other spluttered in his
excitement. "She sees unseen things. She hears the voices of the
future! Come! Come quickly!"
He half-led, half-dragged the boy on.
The hunchback's excitement was infectious. Besides, Horace remembered
that he had a message to give.
The master's wife was standing a step or two from the door of her
house. The window was open and the lamplight, shining through, fell on
her spare figure. Few people were asleep in Beaufays that first night
that red-eyed War stalked abroad.
"I hear footsteps that bear a message," she said, peering into the
darkness as they approached.
"It is I, Madame, Horace Monroe," the boy answered.
"You carry news of disaster and triumph on your shoulders," she
declaimed, "disaster that has been, triumph that is to come."
"I--I don't know, Madame," the boy replied, hesitatingly, surprised and
a little afraid of this oracular form of address.
"Show her your capture!" ejaculated the hunchback, in a hard fierce
whisper.
Horace stepped forward into the oblong of light shed by the lamp
shining through the open window.
The woman advanced swiftly and looked down at the bird, which, pinned
under the boy's arm, snapped at her viciously.
She looked long and movelessly.
"The Eagle of Germany!" she said at last, "hungry and exhausted,
vanquished and a captive in Belgium."
"The left wing is withered," put in Croquier, but she did not seem to
hear.
"Your news?" she asked, not turning to the boy but staring fixedly at
the eagle, which glared at her evilly.
"M. Maubin is safe, Madame," the boy began, with a blunt desire to give
good news first.
"Yes," she said, "as yet. But he will not return."
Horace jumped at this repetition of the master's prophecy.
"Deschamps--"
"I warned them that the lad would suffer. He is dead?"
"No, Madame, but he was struck by a splinter of shell, and--" the words
stuck in his throat.
"Yes?" she queried, gently.
"The doctor says he will be totally blind, Madame!"
The bird croaked harshly, as though with a laugh of evil satisfaction.
It never took its eyes from the woman nor did she relax her gaze upon
the bird.
"So," she said, "he is blind, my husband has gone to his death, and
you, an American, return safe, bearing a captive."
The woman's figure stiffened, as though in a trance.
The hunchback clenched the boy's arm in a grip so powerful that he had
difficulty in repressing a cry.
"Listen to every word," warned Croquier.
Even the bird ceased struggling against his bonds, only the rumble of
the cannonade and the irregular crashes of the replying guns ripping
apart the stillness.
"It is much," the woman said at last, in a faraway voice, "for the
Fates to show on the first day of the war. Look you," she continued,
"the signs are clear.
"Our own dear Belgium will suffer, will suffer so terribly that for
many years to come she will grope among the nations as one that has
been blinded, but not as one that has lost courage or is mortally hurt.
France will suffer, even unto death, but her spirit will be undefeated
to the last. Germany shall come fluttering down to ruin only when
a young America throws herself upon a famished and half-exhausted
Germany."
Croquier listened with arrested breath. To him, every word of the
prophecy was a gospel.
"Then America will come to the aid of Belgium, Madame?" the boy
queried, eagerly.
The woman did not reply. She tottered back and rested her hand heavily
upon the window-sill, as though her strength were spent.
Horace moved restlessly, with a certain disquieting fear of the
supernatural, although his heedless American nature disregarded
superstition. Could it be true that one might look into the future?
The woman spoke again.
"Croquier," she said, "you are a Frenchman. Take you the captive Kaiser
with his withered pinion. See that it does not escape. You understand?
It must never escape. Look you! Never!"
"Never!" said the hunchback, in a deep solemn voice that registered a
vow.
Horace hesitated. A boyish pride held him back. The bird was his prize.
He wanted to show his captive to the school, and, perhaps, brag a
little of his exploit. Suppose Croquier should let the bird escape!
Then he remembered the hunchback's phenomenal strength and felt a
momentary shame at his own desire to boast.
"You may not keep the bird, American boy," said the woman, "it is not
for you. To win, but not keep, so runs the future."
"Give me the bird!" The hunchback's voice was rasping and authoritative.
Horace turned and held out the eagle.
The hunchback took it in his iron grip, catching the boy's hand with
it. The clench was like a vise.
"You've my hand!" the boy cried out.
The grip relaxed. Horace withdrew his fingers. They were bruised as
though he had been caught in a closing door.
"You'll kill the bird," said Horace, "if you grip it that way."
"I shall not kill the bird," boomed the hunchback. His tones became
sinister, "And it shall not escape!"
There was a gripping prescience in the scene: in the figure of the
master's wife, all in black, standing by the window, the light just
catching the side of her chalk-white face; in the twisted shoulder
and large head of the powerful hunchback; in the evil glitter of the
eagle's amber eyes which, despite the change of owners, had not wavered
from their intent malevolence upon the woman's face; in the overtones
of sullen wrath vibrating from the cannonade.
The silence became unendurable and Horace, uncomfortable in the
tension, blundered into the breaking of it.
"Madame," he hazarded, "about Deschamps?"
She turned her head slightly to listen.
The boy had a sudden plan.
"If you could come with me to tell his folks?" he pleaded timidly.
The expression and manner of the master's wife changed on the instant.
From the personification of vengeance, she turned to tenderness and
sympathy.
"Dear lad," she said, at once, "it is a hard thing for you to do, is it
not? I will come at once. Shall I tell them, or will you?"
"If, Madame," begged Horace, "you could speak. I--I--" he broke off,
with a lump in his throat. "You see, Madame, Deschamps and I were
chums."
"I understand," she answered softly. "I will tell them, as gently as
I can, and you will answer what they ask you. Is not that best?"
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Sphere."_
THE CHARGE IRRESISTIBLE.
Bengal lancers in the open warfare of the first few months driving the
Germans before them like chaff before the wind.]
"Oh, Madame!" His voice was full of thankfulness.
She sighed long and heavily.
"We shall soon grow accustomed to telling and hearing sad news in
Belgium," she said. Then, turning to Croquier, she added, "You have the
bird safe?"
"Safe as the grave!" boomed the hunchback in reply and disappeared into
the darkness.
The village street, usually so quiet at this hour, stirred feverishly.
Lights glimmered in every house. One woman was kneeling at the foot of
the great wooden cross which stood in the marketplace. Another came out
from the church, weeping silently. Their husbands were in the army.
The boy's heart sank as he came up to the little house from which he
had started a few hours before with Deschamps and the master. He opened
the garden gate and Mme. Maubin entered. The click of the latch, as
the gate closed behind Horace, had been heard. The door opened and
the burly figure of Deschamps' father stood outlined. He welcomed the
master's wife with hearty hospitality. The woman said nothing, but
entered the house. She went straight to the mother, who had risen to
her feet and was standing by the table, a frightened look in her eyes.
"You are of Belgium, Madame?" the master's wife began.
The mother winced.
"But yes," she said.
"Then you will know how to be brave."
Mme. Deschamps' lips trembled.
"Is it my boy?" she asked anxiously, turning to Horace.
"He is not killed, Madame," said the boy, chokingly.
"He is hurt! He is dying!"
"No, Madame," Horace answered, "the doctor said that he would soon get
well. But--"
The master's wife intervened.
"Your son will need you now more than ever before," she said softly.
"He is not lost to you. He is closer to you."
The mother struggled for composure.
"He is crippled?"
"He is blind, Madame," said Horace.
She staggered back a step and steadied herself with a hand on the table.
"My boy! My boy! Blind!" she cried.
No one moved. The distant guns beat their menace more insistently into
the room.
"M. Maubin told me to say," added Horace, in a low voice, "that he bid
you remember that your son was Belgium's first boy hero."
"Where is he?" broke in the father.
"At Embourg, Monsieur, at the house of Dr. Mallorbes."
"I will go see him. Tell me exactly how it happened."
So Horace, overcoming his embarrassment in the sight of the mother's
courage, told the story of the bursting shell, of the splinter which
struck the boy's forehead and of the removal to the doctor's house.
Then he told of the surgeon's work and, finally, of the departure for
Liége and his own return.
It was late before the boy had finished his story and he was beginning
to drop with sleep. Moreover, he expected that all his adventures would
have to be recounted anew at home, where, possibly, his old maid aunt
would have begun to grow nervous over his non-return.
Leaving Deschamps' house, relieved of the strain of telling his tale of
sorrow, Horace sank under a terrible fatigue. The sound of the guns
rapped at his brain and the night air was heavy with the pulsing of
evil destiny. He stumbled with weariness as he reached his own house,
glad to find the place dark and his aunt asleep. Evidently, his return
was not expected.
The boy's rest was troubled and disturbed by dreams of war. He wakened
in the morning, stiff and sore, wondering where he was and what had
happened. The tumult of the shells bursting on Fort Embourg, a mile
away, brought all back to his remembrance. Besides, through the morning
haze, which bore promise of a sultry day, a vicious drumming which had
not been audible the night before betrayed itself to the lad's instinct
as rifle-fire. He got up and dressed hurriedly.
His aunt was already seated at breakfast and was surprised at seeing
the boy, for she had not heard her nephew's entrance the night before.
Though eager to get out into the village and learn the news, Horace
was compelled to tell the night's doings in detail, but his aunt was
utterly unable to realize the significance of the breaking-out of war.
Having lived nearly all her life in the United States, she was unable
to grasp the serious importance of European alliances. Moreover, she
possessed to the full a certain American love of words and Horace
could not make her see that the time for speechmaking had gone by.
Being, herself, always ready to bluff a little, she suspected the same
in every one else. The guns, thundering near by, did not disturb her
confidence a whit.
"Of course they'll fire a few rifles and shoot off some guns," she
said, "that's always done for effect. But the governments will get
together and fix it up; you'll see."
The boy groaned inwardly at this slack belief in the policy of "fixing
things up" which he knew so well, but he replied, earnestly,
"I don't think so, Aunt Abigail, from what the master told us. He
thinks it's going to be a big war, like the kind you read about in
history."
"Nonsense," retorted the old maid, sententiously. "The world has got
much too civilized for people to go around killing each other. Finish
your breakfast!"
Horace knew that there was little likelihood of changing the ideas of
Aunt Abigail. Though kindly and generous at heart, in spite of her
brusque ways, she belonged to that class of Americans which is honestly
convinced that everything in the New World is progressive and sound
and that everything in the Old World is backward and decaying.
"Did you say that the schoolmaster had gone to the war?" she asked.
"Yes, Aunt."
The old maid sniffed.
"More fool he," she said crisply; "he's old enough not to get romantic.
What's going to be done with the school?"
"That's all been arranged," the boy replied, without explaining
further, for he knew that his aunt would regard the master's action as
"high-falutin and romantic."
"Well, you'd better get ready," she said sharply, "though I don't see
how you can do much study with all the noise those forts are making. I
should have thought they'd have had sense enough to build them farther
away from where folks live."
"Aunt," said Horace, "suppose the Germans should take Beaufays?"
"Well, what about it?"
"If they burn the houses and steal everything and kill everybody and--"
"Get along with your foolishness," his aunt replied. "I've known plenty
of Germans. They weren't much different from any other kind of humans
I ever saw. Burn and steal and murder? What next! Get on to school,
Horace, or you'll be late."
The boy put on his cap and left the house.
The air was heavy with the smell of powder, drifting from the
not-distant bombardment. Groups of villagers and peasants loitered
aimlessly about the streets. Work was at a standstill. One of the old
men called him.
"Was it you who caught the eagle?" he asked.
"Yes," Horace answered, "I caught him."
The old peasant chuckled with toothless gums.
"Perched on a pole he is," he said, "and we'll have the Kaiser himself
there, presently."
"Where is the bird?" asked the boy.
"In front of the inn. Croquier's got it. He won't take his eyes off it."
A few steps brought Horace to the _estaminet_ and there, blinking in
the strong August sunlight, perched the eagle that he had captured the
night before. During the night an excessively strong cage had been made
of twisted strips of wrought iron. It would have resisted an elephant's
strength. Welded into the top of the cage was a ring and to this ring
was fastened a steel chain. The end was clamped around Croquier's
wrist.
So much, at least, ensured that the bird would not escape, but there
was a surer sign still, for Horace, looking on the hunchback's
face, saw the face of a man who had been transfigured. The savage
petulance, born of misfortune, had been replaced by an equally savage
determination, born of confidence and trust. It did not need two looks
to see that the man would be cut in pieces before he would betray his
trust. He spoke as soon as the lad approached.
"I have been wondering," he said, "how you, with your little strength,
managed to capture this bird. Bird! It is an evil spirit. I have never
seen a bird so strong, and I know what is strength. Twice, last night,
it tried to escape."
"How?" asked the boy.
"When I left you, I went home, put it in a huge cage of twisted wicker
and closed my eyes, to see what would happen. I kept my fingers crooked
for action, though. I did not close my eyes for more than ten seconds.
There was a cracking sound and when I opened my eyes, the cage was a
tangle of splinters and the bird was preening its wings to fly."
"But it can't fly!"
"I'm not so sure of that," the hunchback answered, "but it had no
chance, my fingers were round its throat in a second. I had hard work
to hold it and I am three, yes, ten times as strong as you.
"Then I put it in a wire frame in which a badger had once been kept.
Its amber eyes glared, but it made no resistance. Again I closed my
eyes, to tempt it, and when I opened them again, beak and talon had
riven the frame apart and the body was rasping through. I grappled
it again. It pecked at me, almost reaching my eyes, but my hands are
strong, and it could not get away."
He looked down at his hands with a touch of pride.
"There's not another man in the village could have done it," he said.
"I believe that," said Horace, whose hand was still sore and bruised
from the grip of the day before. "What did you do then?"
"I went to my brother, the blacksmith.
"'Pierre!' I said to him, 'get up! Get up at once and light the fire in
your forge. We have a demon to cage.'
"'Are the Germans here?' he asked.
"'Come at once,' I said, 'you are needed.'
"So, when he came out, I showed him the bird and told him the words of
the master's wife.
"'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
"'Make me a cage of bands of twisted iron,' I said, 'which would defy
the beak and talon of Jupiter's eagle that wields the thunderbolts, and
finish it before daybreak.'
"So, all the long night through, I sat there in the forge, while the
fetters were being made to hold this evil thing a prisoner. There is no
bolt or screw in the cage, every bar is welded on the other, save for
one intricate opening. Just before daylight it was done.
"'Good,' said I, 'now come with me to the curé, Pierre, and we will
speak to him.'"
"To the curé?" queried Horace, "why?"
"That was what my brother asked," the hunchback answered, "but to the
church we went. The curé was there already, praying at the altar,
though it was yet more than an hour before the service.
"'Bless me this cage, Monsieur le Curé,' I said to him, 'it has been
made to hold an evil spirit, a demon, a German demon.'
"The curé looked at the eagle and crossed himself.
"'It is ill to traffic with demons, Croquier,' he said to me, 'but I
have never heard of anything made by God or man which was the worse for
a blessing. Give me the cage and I will bless it before the altar, as
you ask.'
"He blessed the cage and gave it back to me. I got ready to put the
bird in it. There followed such a fight as I have never seen. Into the
wicker cage the bird had gone willingly enough, I had put it into the
wire frame without difficulty, but when I tried to put it into the cage
that the good priest had blessed, a thousand furies entered the bird's
black heart and he fought with beak and claw as though he were inspired
by fiends. It took the three of us, the curé, my brother, and myself--"
"The curé helped you?" interrupted the boy, in surprise.
"He said it was the business of a churchman to fight demons, whether
in the spirit or in feathers," the hunchback answered, his hard face
softening into a smile. "Together we forced it into the cage. There it
is now and there it stays. My brother has riveted the door."
Horace looked at the bird.
"It certainly is curious," he said, "especially with that crippled
left wing. It does seem symbolic of the crippled left arm of the
Kaiser.[7] Perhaps it may be a prophecy. Perhaps Mme. Maubin's words
may come true. Perhaps America may have to join in the war!"
The hunchback nodded portentously.
"Her words will come true," he said. "I don't know what she will say
over the fact that the curé had to help us cage the bird. Will it turn
into a Holy War?"
This was beyond Horace, but, just as he was about to answer, the "last
bell" pealed from the little school building down the street.
Croquier started.
"But I saw the schoolmaster going to Liége!" he cried. "The boy has
forgotten!"
"He hasn't forgotten," answered Horace; "I'll tell you about it after
school," and dashed across the street lest he should be late.
The boys filed in quietly, with a profound solemnity. It is not easy
to touch a boy's honor to the depth, but when it is reached, and
especially when no adult is present, it is a force more sensitive and
more ruthless than that of any man or woman. Which fact the master knew.
When the bell had stopped ringing, there was a moment's hesitation, for
the masterless boys knew scarcely how to begin. Horace, rising in his
seat, told the school the master's message and spoke of the blinding of
Deschamps. A deft word led the boys to a voluntary resumption of their
class-work.
One lad, less responsive to the spirit of boy-honor, whispered to his
neighbor.
A roar of anger burst over the school and the culprit slunk into
his book. It is not good to awake the primitive and rude justice of
self-governing boys.
In spite of the distracting influence of the continuous bombardment,
the morning passed without incident. Some of the boys wandered in their
attention and many shuffled restlessly, but the sense that each one
was on honor kept them in hand and the school dismissed itself at the
regular hour, proud of its own accomplishment of self-control.
That evening Horace found his aunt in defiant mood.
"While you were at school to-day," she said, "the mayor came to tell
me to go away, either to Brussels or Antwerp, where, perhaps, I could
escape to America."
"And what did you say, Aunt Abigail?" the boy asked anxiously.
The old maid tossed back her head.
"I told them that the little finger of the American minister in
Brussels was stronger than Germany a dozen times over. I told him that
the United States wasn't looking for trouble, but was perfectly willing
to whip any one when necessary. I said we could whip our weight in
wild-cats, and we can.
"Then he had the nerve to talk the way you talked this morning. He said
that the Germans would commit all sorts of horrible atrocities if they
broke through Liége. I told him that just as I didn't think the Germans
were fools enough to fight with Americans, so I didn't think they were
brutes enough to fight against women and children."
"What did the mayor say to that?" queried the boy, regretting that he
had not heard the discussion.
"He didn't tell me I was a fool, but I could see he thought I was, and
I didn't tell him he was a fool, but he could see I thought he was, so
the matter stopped at that."
"But, Aunt Abigail," said Horace, puzzled between the truth in the
master's words and the grain of truth in his aunt's ideas, "suppose the
army runs amuck and the officers can't control it?"
"Then it isn't much of an army," she snapped back. "I hear a lot of
talk about discipline. If the officers can't keep the men from turning
into savages, the way you and the mayor think they will, then it's time
a war came along for somebody to beat sense into their heads. Not that
that has anything to do with it. I told your father I'd be here when he
came back, and it'll take more than a fight between two of these little
European countries--which we could tuck into the State of Texas without
noticing it--to make me break my word."
Horace realized the ignorant narrowness of his aunt's position. He had
often deplored the arrogant Americanism which estranged her foreign
friends. It hurt him, sometimes, when his schoolfellows made fun of
America's boastfulness and bluff, for he knew that many of their
criticisms were just. At the same time, he knew, too, that there were
many things in America wherein his country was superior to Europe. And,
while he raged inwardly at his aunt's prejudices, he could not but
admire her pluck.
"Lots of people are leaving to-night," he ventured.
"I know. I've been helping them to pack. Some of them have gone with
nothing more than the clothes they stood in, others wanted to carry
their house, yes, their gardens, too, I reckon, on their backs. Such
weeping and making a to-do I never saw. I'm not criticizing any one,
understand, only--I stay. Do you want to go?"
"No," said Horace, "I stay, too."
"Good thing," she said, tartly; "I'd hate to see any nephew of mine
show a yellow streak."
Horace spent a large part of that night in helping householders who
had decided to flee from the German advance, every one having been
warned by the mayor. Hardly any one slept that night in Beaufays. Up
to midnight and after, the roads were thronged with the people of the
little village, escaping for their lives. Every horse in the village
or on the farms around was hitched to the largest vehicle that it
could draw, while many walked, carrying their goods. It was the first
installment of that host of misery which, for the next month, crowded
Belgium from Liége to the sea. All night the bombardment grew heavier
and heavier, and, toward morning, heavy cannonading to the west told
that the fort of Boncelles was being attacked. Beaufays, lying just
outside the line of defense, as yet had seen no other evidence of the
battle than the drifting clouds of smoke by day and the flashes of fire
by night.
Breakfast-time came on the morning of August 6 in the little village
of Beaufays, the last breakfast its citizens would eat under their own
flag for many a weary year. Horace was just finishing his meal when a
bugle-call rent the air, followed by the clattering of horses' hoofs.
He jumped up and went to the door.
"Aunt! Aunt! The Germans!" he called.
A party of Uhlans, lances raised, magnificently mounted and looking
soldierly, every inch of them, scouted in advance. The officer in
command summoned the mayor of the village and informed him that the
village was in German hands. He ordered that every door be left open
so that the houses might be searched for arms. The mayor had no
alternative but to comply.
A short distance behind the cavalry came a company of cyclists and
then the ground shook under the short slow tread of the infantry,
swinging along the Verviers road.
Horace stood at the cottage door watching what was, at that time, one
of the most perfect examples of human organization that the world had
seen--the march of the German invading army. These troops had not seen
action. As yet, they were not a fighting army, they were advancing into
the plains of Belgium, to take up the forward charge when the fall
of the Liége forts would enable the establishment of a sound line of
communication.
In these marching men, there was no hint of parade. These troops were
prepared for war. They swung along by tens, by hundreds, by thousands,
by tens of thousands, grimly organized and made for slaughter. The
eye reeled with the steady onward motion, the brain dizzied with the
ponderous human force of it all. These were not a part of Von Emmich's
advance divisions, which were busily engaged in the effort to reduce
Liége, but divisions of the great army under General Von Kluck. Though,
probably, less than a division passed Beaufays, to Horace it seemed
that all the soldiers in the world were in iron-gray uniforms and
pouring through the village street in front of him.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Sketch."_
A MAMMOTH GERMAN WAR CAR.
The terror of the road, armored with 6-inch Krupp steel, shell-proof,
carrying 120 men and two 4.7-inch quick-firers; speed 25 miles per
hour.]
Rank by rank, company by company, regiment by regiment, weapons of
death at their sides, messages of death in their cartridge belts,
thoughts of death in their hearts, they passed, all dressed in the
earthly iron-gray which betokened that the death they gave they would
have to face and that it were well to be as protectively concealed as
possible.
Rank by rank, company by company, regiment by regiment, the sun
glinting on their field equipment, the sun burning the frames already
wearied by the march from garrisons in Germany, the sun waiting to turn
the slain bodies of those marching men to sights of which a soldier
even fears to dream, years after the war is over.
By tens, by thousands, by tens of thousands they came. The details of
organization were incredible. Waiting for each column to pass were men
with buckets of drinking water into which the men dipped their aluminum
cups. Temporary field post-offices were established so that messages
could be gathered as the armies passed and forwarded back to Germany.
Here and there men passed out handfuls of biscuits and prunes.
The infantry strode through in heavy marching order, many of them lame
and footsore, heads and beards shaved under the spiked helmets, bearing
the look of bestial stolidity which is the inseparable result of the
deliberately brutalizing German discipline.
Two trucks passed by with cobblers at work on the march. When a
soldier's shoes wore out on the road, he dropped out of rank, mounted
the running board of the cobbler's truck until he received back his
foot-gear, mended.
Machine-gun companies accompanied the infantry, sprinkled with a few
quick-firers of 2.6-inch caliber, easy to man-handle in action, firing
15 shots a minute. Secondary batteries of this arm also accompanied the
heavy artillery.
Behind the infantry came the field artillery, in which, at this time,
the German Army was weaker than the armies of the other powers.
The field gun was the .96NA, corresponding closely to the British
15-pounder which had been discarded, save for the Territorial Army. It
could not be compared to the famous French "Soixante-Quinze," the most
marvelous of all field-guns, with a 2.9-inch (75 mm.) caliber and the
most mobile weapon known.[8]
On the other hand, the light field howitzers of 4.1-inch caliber
and the heavier field howitzers of 5.9-inch caliber were far in
advance of those of any other army. They were modern, formidable and
admirably handled. This 5.9-inch howitzer shared with the French
"Soixante-Quinze" the dubious honor of being the most death-dealing
weapon of the war.
Following upon the light artillery came the heavy artillery, with
8.4- and 11-inch howitzers. Parts of a heavy siege train followed.
Behind that, again, came the ammunition and provision columns, heavy
horses attached to sections of pontoons for bridges, huge motor plows
for excavating trenches, field hospitals, field motor repair shops,
field forges and field kitchens of every sort. Behind these, again,
came motor busses for the officers of the staff, whom Horace could see
studying their road maps within, and high-powered automobiles for the
military commanders. The stamping of the tens of thousands of feet, of
the horses' hoofs, the grinding of the wheels, and the pounding of the
caterpillar treads filled the air with a cloud of dust through which
the army marched as though it had lungs of steel.
A small detachment, by prearranged orders, was detailed to search and
occupy the village. Few resisted, but the spirit of Belgium was to find
at least one exemplar.
At the door to her house stood Mme. Maubin. A soldier entered the
house, went up-stairs, pulled things into general confusion, and left.
Swiftly the woman reached from the outside through the open window,
struck a match and set the fluttering window-curtains ablaze. In
seconds the flames blazed up and threatened the house.
The officer in command sharply ordered his men to put out the fire,
then turned to the master's wife.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Because the house was defiled by a German foot," she answered.
The officer ground his teeth and turned away. Not for a few days yet
did the Hun want to show his hand. Germany wanted first to seize the
telegraph lines and means of communication before slipping the leash on
the brute instincts of mankind.
"I suppose they'll want to search this house," Aunt Abigail remarked
when the army had passed and the news was spread abroad that a
search-party had been left behind to take possession of the village.
"Why, of course, Aunt, they're sure to," the boy replied.
"Well, they won't!"
She pointed to the Stars and Stripes which she had hung out over her
door.
"I'm going to lock my door," she announced, "and never mind about
any of their old regulations or military rules. If any German tries
to break in under Old Glory, he'll be sorry he started. We've licked
England twice and we'd lick Germany just as easy."
Several times since his aunt had come to keep house after his mother's
death three years before, Horace had disputed this highly inaccurate
historical reference, but always uselessly. He let the point pass by.
"They may respect the flag," he said, "but suppose they don't?"
The old maid faced him.
"There's been a power of soldiers gone by this morning, hasn't there?"
she retorted. "Well, if the whole lot of them were drawn up in front
of my house and they all shouted together 'Open the door!' I wouldn't
open it. So there!"
Horace laughed admiringly. Decidedly his aunt had grit. The passage of
the German Army had not shaken her nerve a scrap.
"Well, Aunt," he said, "if that's the way you feel about it, there's no
need for me to stay. I've got to go to school."
"If you take care of yourself as well as I can take care of myself,
there'll be no trouble," quoth she, and went back to wash her breakfast
dishes as nonchalantly as though a detachment of men were not searching
cottage after cottage.
When, a little later, there came a knock at the door, she went and
looked out. The officer spoke to her in French.
Aunt Abigail, who, in the three years that she had been in the country,
had only learned enough French to do her marketing, answered,
"Talk English!"
"Are you English?" the officer demanded in that tongue, a look of hate
on his face.
"Is that an English flag?" she replied testily.
"We have come to search the house," said the officer and strode
forward.
"Search nothing!" declared Aunt Abigail. "This is an American house!"
and she slammed the door in his face.
There was a heated conference outside between the German officer and
the mayor, but the result was that the search-party passed on. The
telegraph lines were not yet closed and Germany was still trying to
keep the friendship of the United States.
Meantime, school had opened with but few boys present, for almost half
of the boys had fled with their families, and many of those remaining
had been kept at home by their frightened parents. As the morning wore
on, however, a few of the boys came straggling in. Jacques Oopsdiel,
the bell-ringer, the youngest boy in the school, was one of those who
had remained. The lads struggled hard to keep discipline under the
strong spirit of the placard on the master's chair, but the excitement
of the morning had been too great and little work was done.
Suddenly, an ominous figure darkened the wide-open door.
"What is this--a school?" the officer of the search-party asked, in
German.
"Yes," answered Horace, taking the lead, as head boy, now that
Deschamps was no longer there, but answering in French.
"Where is your schoolmaster?"
"At Liége."
Horace ached to add that he was probably aiding in the defense of the
forts but thought that such a statement might bring vengeance on the
school, and so he desisted.
"But where is the schoolmaster who is teaching you now?"
"In his chair!" replied Horace, a trifle defiantly.
The officer strode in, followed by six of his men. He clanked up to the
chair and read the word on the placard. With a German oath he tore it
off, threw it on the floor and ground it under his heel. Then he picked
up a piece of chalk and wrote heavily on the blackboard the word:
DEUTSCHLAND
"There," he said. "That is your master now!"
Jacques Oopsdiel, the little lad, who was known throughout the village
for his obstinate Holland ways, slipped off his chair. Without a word
to any one, in absolute disregard of the German officer and the six
soldiers, he took the sponge and erased the offending word.
"M. Maubin said before he went away," he declared in his high-pitched
childish voice, "that no one was to write on the blackboard without his
permission."
In the astonished silence that followed he returned to his seat.
The officer growled audibly, but he was only empowered to search for
arms and had received strict instructions not to allow any violence to
the civilian population until the invasion was actually accomplished.
So, swearing vengeance on the school in general and on Jacques in
particular, he did not order the child slain on the spot--as he would
have done had it been a week later--but smothered his wrath and walked
out.
The placard, showing the nail-marks of the invader's heel, was replaced
on the master's chair, but it was out of the question to expect that
the school could settle down to work after such intrusion. Jacques
was the hero of the hour, and Horace, though he feared trouble would
result, said nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of his fellows.
The next day witnessed the deepening of the hate between the invaders
and the villagers. The story of the "captive Kaiser" had been spread
abroad and, wherever the Germans went, the prophecy was dinned into
their ears. Wherever they went, jeers and allusions greeted them, for
as yet the people of Beaufays did not realize what malice the Germans
brooded. The erection of a field hospital not far from the borders of
the village increased the friction, for there the Germans saw their
wounded being brought in such countless numbers that they could not
be accommodated. The wounded were billeted in many of the houses of
the village and such of the men and women as remained in Beaufays were
ordered about like slaves.
Each succeeding day the cloud fell blacker. German surgeons and
hospital orderlies strode here and there with kick and curse. Steel was
drawn several times. And still, everywhere, the story of the "captive
Kaiser" percolated, yet, though every house was searched over and over
again, no trace of the crippled eagle could be found. Each day the
restraint upon the soldiers grew slacker and deeds grew more reckless.
The inn-keeper, who had asked for payment of wine drunk by an officer,
was answered by a swordslash across his face. As yet no murder had
been done, but savagery lurked in eye and lip.
One morning, a proclamation was posted on the village walls. It read:
The inhabitants of the town of Andenne, after having declared their
peaceful intentions, have made a surprise attack on our troops.
It is with my consent that the Commander-in-chief has ordered the
whole town to be burned and that about one hundred people have been
shot.
I bring this fact to the knowledge of the City of Liége, so that
citizens of Liége may realize the fate with which they are menaced if
they adopt a similar attitude.
The General Commanding in Chief
VON BUELOW.
From that morning on, terror ruled. Human wolves, emboldened by
official permission, wrought whatever crime they would in Beaufays.
The Germans, checked before Liége and held up to the world's scorn
by a handful of Belgian soldiers, took their vengeance on women and
children, on the aged and on babies alike.
Aunt Abigail, though doubting the evidence of her senses, was compelled
to admit that the hysteria of blood had changed the bodies inside those
iron-gray uniforms and made them something other than human beings. It
was the were-wolf come again.
"These are not men," she said, to Horace, one dreadful night, "they are
maddened machines marked with the Mark of the Beast."
On Saturday, August 15, the eastern forts fell and the troops which
had been billeted in Beaufays received orders that they were to march
westward the next day, but, before they left, they were given full
liberty to ravage the village as they would.
The orgy of devastation began. The soldiers racked and pillaged every
house, seizing every valuable article they could find and committing
acts so vile that they cannot be told. They came, at last, to the house
of Mme. Maubin. Remembering her defiance, the officer in command, in
cruel jest, bade his men leave the house unpillaged and as they drew
back in surprise at this unexpected mercy, he added,
"But she wished her house burned down!"
His men grinned comprehension.
With the special incendiary fuses and bags of compressed powder
officially served out to the German soldiers for their work of
"frightfulness," they set fire to the house, men with fixed bayonets
being stationed at the door to drive the master's wife back into the
flames should she try to escape.
Horace heard the cries of the woman, as she was being burned alive,
and, boy though he was, vowed to avenge her.
The horrors of the day continued under a sky like blue-hot steel.
The heat was terrific and rendered hotter by the flaming houses of
the village. The wild delirium of license gleamed in the eyes of the
soldiers. The school was among the buildings set on fire. It was the
officer's poor revenge.
Late in the afternoon, darting out from some hiding-place, probably
chased by the flames, suddenly the hunchback shot across the street
carrying the black eagle which had been sought so long. At the sight of
the iron cage a shout of rage went up. The officer would have ordered
his men to fire, but the superstition that this might be regarded as an
evil omen seized him. The "captive Kaiser" must be rescued, not killed.
"After him, men!" he cried.
The soldiers, most of them drunk and all of them blind with blood and
fire, raced after the hunchback.
Into the open door of the church the fugitive turned--and disappeared.
The soldiers stormed in after him in a transport of fury and
expectation, but the church was empty save for the figure of the curé
standing at the altar. They searched for the hunchback, but he was
nowhere to be seen. They threatened the curé, but he made no answer.
Then a corporal, avarice overcoming revenge, seeing a gold cross on the
church wall above the pulpit, rushed up the pulpit steps and laid hand
on it.
A "click" resounded through the church.
The curé said, quietly,
"The first man who robs the Church, dies, and dies with the sin on his
head."
The words rolled down in German--the first German words ever spoken
from those altar steps.
A peal of thunder crashed overhead and the soldiers paused as they
gazed at the dimly-lit figure of the priest, standing in the chancel,
in full vestments but--strange contrast--with a pistol in his hand.
The moment passed and then the corporal, with a rude oath, laid both
hands on the cross and tore it from the wall.
There came a quick report and a cry.
While one might count five, the corporal stood erect, holding the
cross, then slowly his body sank, collapsed, crumpled in a heap and he
fell huddled down the pulpit steps--dead.
A howl of rage answered the shot and a dozen men rushed forward and
leaped over the altar rail. The curé made no resistance and a bayonet
thrust through his shoulder pinned him to the ground.
"Why did you shoot?" cried the officer, stamping his foot angrily.
The curé looked up calmly.
"Shall a man be less a patriot for his Church than for his country?" he
asked, simply.
"Drag him out!" came the order.
In the market place, a few steps from the church, stood the great
wooden cross. They dragged the curé there and set him against it,
binding his hands.
Jacques Oopsdiel, who was one of the acolytes of the church, saw the
curé, with the blood flowing over his white vestments, and ran forward
to him with a cry, throwing his arms about him.
A non-commissioned officer caught hold of the lad and tried to pull him
from the priest.
The boy turned like a flash and put his teeth into the soldier's hand.
There was a glint of steel and a bayonet passed through the child's
body. He fell at the feet of the priest.
Overhead, the sky grew darker.
The firing party took up its position.
"Fire!"
The villagers, such as dared to listen, heard the crackle of the
volley, but, before the sound died away, a vivid flash threw the scene
into fierce relief, accompanied by a crash as though the vaults of
heaven had been smitten asunder.
In that one second's glare, those who watched saw the German officer
leap upwards, writhing, and then fall, struck by the thunderbolt.
The thunder pealed on and rolled into the distance, as the figure of
the curé, which had remained for a moment supported by the cross, fell
dead beside the moaning figure of the little acolyte.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This happened in Alouville, on Dec. 11, 1914. The German eagle
with a deformed left wing fluttered down in an exhausted state into
the hands of a French gamekeeper. It was widely heralded as an omen of
victory.
[8] Later (in 1915) the Germans added a 3.9-inch and a 5.1-inch
field-gun, with ranges of 6 and 8 miles respectively.
CHAPTER IV
THE PERILS OF ESCAPE
The German firing-party, sobered by superstitious terror and stunned
by the lightning flash, looked blankly at the charred body of their
officer. Before they could make a move, however, from a house near by
ran a gray-haired woman, a small starred banner in her hand.
Aunt Abigail faced the men with a fine scorn.
"You call yourselves German soldiers!" she cried in tones of utter
contempt, "so much the worse for Germany! You sow the seeds of the Tree
of Hate and for years to come you will eat its bitter fruit. Mark my
words! Is that the work of men--" she pointed to the foot of the cross,
"or of drunken, ignorant and fear-ridden brutes? And you are cowards,
too, like all bullies," she cried, her voice rising as she shook the
flag in their faces, "you dare not fire on this flag, for well you know
that if you did, our young, clean-living American boys would come over
here and drive decency into your souls with your own weapons!"
One of the men, half understanding English, lurched forward savagely,
but a non-commissioned officer pushed him back.
"Let her alone," he said, "we've gone far enough."
Aunt Abigail saw the action.
"You're a man," she said, "at least."
Then stepping out before the rifles, she knelt beside the groaning form
of little Jacques Oopsdiel.
Horace, who had followed his aunt, realized that the Germans might hold
back from murder while they were still shaken by their lieutenant's
death by lightning, but it was quite likely that they would shake off
this merciful mood. A reckless desire on the part of each soldier
to show his comrades that he was not afraid might spur them to any
extremity. The moment must be seized. So, stepping forward quietly, he
picked up the body of Jacques in his arms and started up the street.
"Where are you going, Horace?" his aunt demanded.
"To the house, Aunt," the boy replied, "this little chap needs nursing."
The word "nursing" was as a battle cry to Aunt Abigail. Ever since
the first wounded man had been brought into Beaufays, she had slaved
night and day, giving her time to Germans and Belgians alike. Hence,
when Horace carried the injured lad toward the house, his aunt followed
without further question.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Le Monde Illustré."_
FRENCH CAVALRY ON PATROL.
The dashing force which harassed and hindered the German advance upon
Paris and twice routed the Uhlans.]
In his inmost heart, Horace never expected to reach the threshold. At
every step he seemed to feel the bullet in his back. None the less,
he did not falter or look around and he reached the house in safety,
without any further action from the soldiers.
Swift examination showed that little Jacques had no chance for life.
He lingered until late in the evening and then breathed his last, one
more of the thousands of children wantonly killed by the Germans during
their occupation of Belgium.
Late that night, Horace was wakened by a light tapping at his window.
He darted out of bed on the instant, knowing well that this cautious
signal could not come from Germans, who, instead, undoubtedly would
have battered the door with the butt-ends of their rifles. Peering out,
he saw the hunchback, still carrying the caged eagle.
"Croquier!" he gasped, in astonishment, for the hunchback's
disappearance had been a matter of the most intense curiosity and
mystery in the village. "Wait a second, I'll open the door."
The hunchback shook his head and lifted up the cage.
"Take hold of this," he directed.
Horace took the cage and set it on the floor in his room. The amber
eyes glittered as evilly as ever.
"Now," said Croquier, still in that same strained whisper, "give me a
hand up."
Bracing himself firmly, Horace leaned down and held out his hand.
The hunchback grasped it in his terrible grip and with a jerk which
almost pulled the boy's arm out of its socket, he clambered to the
window and climbed in. Then, moving so quietly that he made absolutely
no noise, he squatted down on the floor beside the cage.
"Where in the name of wonder have you been?" asked Horace.
The hunchback brushed the question aside.
"I've doubled on those fiends a dozen times," he said. "They haven't
caught me yet, and they never will. Now, listen to me closely. Those
pigs of Germans have found a keg of brandy and they're drinking
themselves courageous so as to be brave enough to attack this house.
You and your aunt must leave and leave now!"
"Aunt won't go," said Horace, "there's no use asking her. I spoke about
it, again, this evening."
"She has got to go or there's no saying what will happen," the
hunchback answered. "I'm not telling what I think, but what I know.
Bring her here at once, but do it, if you can, so that none of the
wounded suspect anything."
The boy thought for a moment.
"I'll try," he said.
Slipping on some clothes, the boy went stumbling noisily through the
next room where two wounded German officers were lying. He knew, if he
stepped softly, it might arouse suspicion. Reaching his aunt's room, he
said loudly, as he knocked and was bidden enter,
"Aunt Abigail, I'll have to have that mustard poultice put on, after
all."
The woman looked at him shrewdly. Knowing that nothing had been said
that evening concerning a poultice, she realized that there was a
meaning hidden behind the words.
"Do you need it now?" she asked.
"Right away, please," the boy replied. "I'll go back to my room and be
ready as soon as you come."
The old maid got up hastily. Taking the still warm kettle from the
stove and carrying a box of mustard, she passed by the wounded officers
into the lad's room beyond.
A whispered word or two cleared up the situation.
As Horace had expected, she refused point-blank.
"No," she said, "I'm not going, no matter what happens. I said I'd
stay, and I'll stay. If they kill me they'll have to fight America. If
they take me to Germany as a prisoner, I'll probably find something for
my fingers to do there. But run--that I won't."
"And the boy?" asked Croquier.
"He's got to go," the old maid replied sharply, "that's quite
different. Those beasts wouldn't hesitate to fire on him when, perhaps,
their officers might succeed in preventing the murder of their nurse.
"You're right, Monsieur Croquier, Horace must go."
"It's a matter of minutes," the hunchback warned.
"Then what are you waiting for?" she retorted testily. "Go, and go
quick, both of you. And take that bird! I don't want it around here."
"You don't think I'd leave that, do you?" the hunchback said
emphatically, and, grabbing it, he swung himself out of the window.
"Good-bye, Aunt," said Horace, and prepared to follow.
His aunt looked at him sharply but there was affection, also, in her
glance.
"You'll need a wool shirt, wool socks, and your heavy boots," she said,
"and if you break through the lines, send a cablegram to your father.
Off with you, now!"
As she spoke, a sound of riotous singing was heard in the village
street.
Horace did not hesitate. He dropped from the window-sill.
He had hardly picked himself up when some clothing came flying out of
the window and landed beside him with a thump. He hastily picked up the
shirt, socks, and boots.
"Follow me," said the hunchback, "and go quietly."
His heart in his mouth, Horace dived after Croquier into the bushes
back of the house. They climbed two walls and a hedge, the hunchback
clambering as soft-footed as a cat in spite of his ungainly shape,
and then passed through a hedge. Crossing a couple of gardens they
came to an old well. There the hunchback swung over the well-head and
disappeared.
The hole was black, damp and uninviting, but a sound of hammering told
that the soldiers had reached the house and the boy followed Croquier
without hesitation. As he swung his legs over, his feet touched the
rungs of a rough ladder. The hunchback gripped his arm and drew him
sideways through a hole in the well-curb.
Drawing breath, Horace found himself in a tunnel.
"Where does this go?" he whispered.
"It connects with the vaults under the church," Croquier answered.
"How did you find out about it?"
"I didn't," said the hunchback; "I made it."
"When?"
"Last week. The story of me and the eagle was all over the village and
the Germans were looking for me everywhere. There wasn't a corner they
didn't search.
"To have a hiding-place which no one could reveal, even under torture,
meant life and death. Therefore I had to make it myself. This well is
in my neighbor's garden."
"Is it? I hadn't followed which way we were going. But wasn't it a lot
of work?"
"Yes," said the hunchback, "but when it's your life that's at stake,
you're willing to do some work. It wasn't so hard to figure the course
of the tunnel from here to the church," he explained; "one couldn't
help striking the vaults somewhere, they're so big."
"So that's how you escaped this afternoon from out of the church."
"Of course."
"It's a bully hiding-place," said Horace, "but how about food?"
"I've a whole storehouse here."
"And air?"
"None too good. I drove a length of iron pipe upwards to the surface of
the ground. Just where it comes out I don't know. I never had a chance
to look. It isn't much, but it's something."
"How much longer do you expect to stay here?" asked Horace.
"Not a minute longer than I can help. I'm clearing out to-night."
"To-night?"
"Just as soon as things quiet down, we start. It's our last chance.
To-morrow the troops will march on, Liége will be put under regular
German rule, patrols and sentries will be established and we'll be
trapped. It's to-night or not at all. We have got to escape in the
confusion of this last day's bombardment."
The boy thought a moment.
"I'm ready enough," he said. "I don't want to stay here under the
Germans. The school's burned down, so that my promise to M. Maubin
couldn't be kept."
"It couldn't be kept, anyway," the hunchback replied. "I overheard the
Germans say that you were to be disposed of, no matter who escaped. You
were present in the school defiance, don't forget, and it was you who
carried off little Jacques. You're an American and an eye-witness of a
good deal. No, they won't let you go, you know too much."
"So?" said the boy thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not surprised. But if we
clear out from here, where do you plan to go?"
"To France."
"Why not to Holland?" queried Horace. "That's nearer. The Germans are
all heading for France and we'll only run into them again."
"Go to Holland if you want to," said the hunchback, "but I'm not
leaving here to save my own skin. I'm looking for a chance to fight."
There was a certain reproach in his tones and Horace felt it, but he
hesitated before he replied.
"You're a Frenchman, Croquier," he said, "after all, and it's your
scrap; but, you see, I'm an American, and however much I might want to,
perhaps I ought to keep out of it."
The hunchback made no reply.
"Of course," continued Horace, slowly, "I know what Father would do."
"I don't know your father very well," said Croquier, "but if your aunt
were in your place, I know what she'd do."
"Oh, yes, Aunt Abigail would fight. So would Father, especially if,
like me, he'd seen the Germans blind Deschamps, burn Mme. Maubin alive,
massacre the curé and kill little Jacques. I don't see any other decent
way out of it, Croquier, I've got to fight."
"I never doubted that you would," the hunchback replied.
"Very well, then," said the boy, squaring his shoulders, "it's for
France, then. How do we get there?"
"I've been working it all out," said the hunchback, "and keeping my
ears open. We've got to go either by Namur or Dinant."
"I thought the Germans were going there."
"They are," Croquier agreed. "That shows they expect to face the French
army there. If we want to join the French, it is necessary for us to be
there before the Germans take up positions. Every hour makes it harder.
With the fall of the forts, the railway lines are open to the Germans
for troop transport. Besides that, several days ago, we saw divisions
marching by to the southward, not stopping to join in the Liége attack.
We've got to creep through or go round them. One must move quickly, for
Namur won't hold long."
"I thought Namur was stronger than Liége."
"From the talk I've overheard this last week, while I've been hiding,"
the hunchback replied, "Von Buelow won't attack Namur with his infantry
until the forts are smashed by their heavy siege guns. Those have gone
on ahead."
"I guess they lost too heavily at Liége to want to repeat the dose,"
said Horace.
"It is that, exactly. So, what we've got to do is to slide through
the German armies while they are on the march and before they take up
definite positions on the battle-line. After that, a rat won't be
able to get through."
[Illustration: ROYAL BOY WARRIORS.
_British Official Photograph._
Captain the Prince of Wales, who fought with his regiment at the Battle
of Neuve Chappelle.
_Courtesy of "The Graphic."_
Prince Umberto of Italy, who has joined the colors, now that his
kingdom has been invaded.]
"Can we do it?" asked the boy, anxiously.
"If we were Red Indians, I would say 'yes,'" Croquier answered; "being
what we are, I only say, 'I don't know.' We may be killed if we go, but
we'll have a chance to fight for ourselves and for France; we're sure
to be killed if we stay, and we won't have a chance to fight."
"What's your plan?"
"To travel through woods and on by-paths. The armies crowd every road
which is wide enough to take a wheeled wagon. We can dodge them if we
go carefully and fast."
"When do we start?"
"Have you got your shoes on?"
"Yes."
"Then we start now."
The hunchback went to the well-head and peered out cautiously.
"All's quiet," he said, returning, "and, so far as I can see, your
house is safe. They haven't burned it down, in any case. Now, fill your
pockets with food as full as you can hold. We don't want to waste time
looking for provisions. Are you ready?"
"Ready," said Horace, soberly, realizing the peril into which he was
plunging.
"Have no fear," said the hunchback as a last piece of advice, "you're
as safe with me as you could be with anybody. A poor chap, like I
used to be, must know a good bit about the country. I ran away from a
circus when I was a boy, so I learned early how to take care of myself.
There's one rule--avoid the roads!"
"But an army might camp in the fields."
"At night, perhaps, but by day it is marching and that, not through the
fields, but along the roads. In the old days, when men fought with cold
steel, one could push troops over rough country and each company could
forage for its own food, travel its own road and be ready for fighting
when it was time to fight.
"There is nothing like that now. An army is ten times as large. It is
fed at regular hours, in regulated companies, on a diet regulated in
advance, cooked by motor kitchens supplied by a provision train of a
score of heavy motor-trucks which are traveling at a regulated number
of miles from a central supply depot.
"As a health measure it cannot be more than a certain number of miles
from drinkable water. Even on the march, the ammunition column
must be kept in close connection with the guns. It must operate or
advance behind a cavalry screen, and, at all times, must be in direct
communication with its staff officers. All that means travel on hard
roads, at a certain pace, over a certain route, so that a general can
know, at any given minute, where every section of his army is to be
found. It is that which is in front of us, and we've got to outguess it
and outmarch it."
The hunchback had filled his pockets and attended to a number of minor
matters as he talked. Now he slipped out of the well and waited for the
boy to follow, carefully closing the hole in the well curb after him.
"You're not going to carry that cage all the way to France, surely?"
queried Horace in surprise, as he noted that Croquier held the black
eagle in his hand.
His companion raised his eyebrows.
"Think you that I am going to donate it for the Germans?"
"Leave it in the tunnel," the boy said; "they'll never find it there."
"Mme. Maubin said it must never escape. It is my trust!" He lowered his
voice suddenly.
"I see," said Horace, "it would break the prophecy."
"This cage is going to Paris," said the hunchback. "The Kaiser said he
would be in Paris before the year is out. I will make good his boast.
It will make all Paris laugh."
The eagle croaked harshly in the darkness.
"Can't you keep it quiet?" said Horace, his nerves on edge.
The hunchback laughed softly.
"Little noises don't mean much these days," he said, "when there's a
wounded man groaning in every cottage."
They passed out of the kindly shelter of gardens into the fields
beyond, and silently, stooping low, ran through a hollow into a small
copse.
"Where now?"
"One must cross the river," said Croquier. "Not at Tilff or Esneux. The
bridges there are guarded."
Horace thought a minute.
"Will it take us much out of our way to go down by Poulseur?" he asked.
"No. Why do you ask?"
"I remember a place where a big tree has fallen right across the
stream," the lad replied. "We could crawl over it quite easily. I
found it, one day, when I was bird's-nesting. I think I can find the
spot again."
"Good. Now, as little noise as possible. Go round all clearings. Keep
your ears wide open. If I stop, you stop. If in danger, don't move;
remember that every wild animal's first defense is movelessness."
He slipped into the woods.
Horace had expected to find the hunchback a retardation to escape, and,
in the tunnel, he had wondered whether he would not be wiser, after
all, to escape to Holland and thence to America. However, when the boy
remembered that the hunchback had saved his life, this idea seemed rank
ingratitude.
Once on the trail, Horace found to his vast surprise that the shoe was
on the other foot. Instead of being compelled to humor his companion
and to help him from time to time, the boy had much ado to keep up with
his comrade. At a stumbling pace which was neither walk nor run, the
hunchback forced his way through bush and shrub, leapt clumsily from
stone to stone and kept up a steady, swift gait which kept the boy
panting for breath.
Safely and without raising the alarm, they reached the fallen tree
spanning the river. The former time that Horace had been there, he had
been content to lie down and wriggle across, but the hunchback, for all
his apparent clumsiness, went across it like a tight-rope walker, and
Horace, for very shame, could not do otherwise. The hunchback turned
his head over his shoulder--he could do so, in the most uncanny way,
without turning his body--and watched him.
"Your nerve is good," he grunted, approvingly.
They went on at the same swift pace, hour after hour, over stumps,
fallen trees, and stones, down gullies and up ridges, all in the black
dark, the hunchback scouting in advance. From time to time they crossed
a road, and this was done with the utmost circumspection. At last,
the chill which heralds the dawn warned them of the dangers of coming
daylight. The hunchback commenced to quest about, like a dog seeking
the scent.
"What are you looking for?" asked Horace.
"A place to hide and sleep," Croquier answered. "We won't move by day.
A hunchback with a caged eagle accompanied by a boy--oh, no, that would
be much too easy to trace! We can only travel by night. Well, we ought
to be somewhere near the village of Hamoir. I don't want to be too
close. The village might be occupied by the enemy."
Presently, with a low exclamation of satisfaction, Croquier called to
the lad.
"I've found the place," he said. "Let us walk back a little way."
"Why?" asked Horace.
"You'll see," was all the reply he got.
Obediently the lad walked back to the point designated, where a narrow
footpath crossed the stream.
"Now," said the hunchback, "walk through the water and over on the
other side and then walk back again."
Though puzzled by this performance, Horace did so several times, the
hunchback following in his tracks.
"Turn up-stream!" came the next order, and, with the word, he turned
directly into the water.
"Whatever you do," warned the hunchback, "don't step on anything that
projects out of the water and don't touch the bank."
Completely at a loss to understand his companion's purposes, Horace
obeyed to the letter. After wading up stream for a hundred yards or so,
Croquier handed the cage to Horace.
"Give me a leg up to that branch," he said, pointing to the limb of a
large tree that overhung the river, bifurcating from the bank.
Taking the hunchback's foot in one hand, Horace gave a heave, just
enabling his companion to reach the branch overhead. Next he handed
up the cage. Then the hunchback, leaning down, grasped the boy's
outstretched hand and pulled him to the bough, beside him. Thence he
slid down the sloping trunk to the point where the roots divided,
forming a natural deep hollow. Here he ensconced himself comfortably,
and Horace followed.
"Breakfast and a good sleep," said the hunchback, "are the two things
we need now."
Horace agreed heartily. He was worn out by trying to keep up with the
hunchback.
"But why did you go to all this trouble to get here?" he asked. "We
could have stepped right on to this tree from the bank."
"To have some stray village dog chance upon our scent and bark itself
hoarse over our heads, attracting the attention of any one who might be
passing in the fields? No, thank you! Coming the way we did, there's no
trail for a dog to scent, no track to follow. We can afford to sleep
soundly. Even if the crippled bird croaks, it will only sound like one
of the natural noises of the wood."
Thus reassured, Horace ate a good breakfast, and, wearied by the
night's exertions and excitement, fell into a sound sleep. It was late
in the afternoon before he woke, but, as he slowly came to wakefulness,
a hand was put over his mouth.
The boy struggled, for the first dazed moment not realizing where he
was, but the hunchback's grip would have held a lion. Then Croquier,
seeing recognition in the lad's eyes, freed him, but laid a finger on
his lip.
Horace repressed a yawn and listened. Voices could be heard close by,
talking in German. The boy could only distinguish a word here and
there. Evidently the men were strolling along the river bank, at the
end of a day's march. Horace shivered to think how near they might have
been to discovery had the hiding-place been less carefully chosen.
"Could you catch what they said?" the hunchback queried in a whisper,
when the voices had receded into the distance.
"I only caught a word or two. The name 'Bomal' was repeated several
times. They seemed to be going to camp there for the night."
Croquier nodded. Bomal, a railway station on the road from Liége to
Jemelle and a junction of four high roads, was evidently a good place
to avoid.
As evening came on, the fugitives ate heartily from the contents of
their pockets and, as soon as the darkness favored, struck south and a
little east to avoid Bomal and the main roads.
The flames of a burning village, sure evidence that the Germans were
near, drove them west again. A wide road thronged with motor-lorries,
one following upon another so that they almost touched, delayed them
for two hours, but they crossed under a culvert near Odeigne.
The woods were filled with refugees from near by villages, and though
these were loyal Belgians, Croquier would not allow himself to be seen
by them, lest they should let a word slip. The two fugitives passed
scores of bodies of women and children, murdered by the Germans and
left unburied. Corpses were thrown into the wells, contaminating the
water. Those who had been wounded were abandoned, without any attempt
to relieve their sufferings. The men remaining had been commandeered to
dig trenches and build defensive works against troops of their own
country, in defiance of the laws of warfare, just as, in other places,
women were herded together to walk in front of the German troops during
the fighting, their living bodies being made to serve as a human shield
against machine-gun fire. When they fell they were left to die.[9]
Horace and the hunchback passed through this zone of misery and camped
for the succeeding day on the Ourthe River, three quarters of a mile
north of Laroche.
[Illustration: LIQUID FIRE PROJECTED FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
LIQUID FIRE PROJECTED FROM PORTABLE RESERVOIRS.]
Hilly and rugged country made the next night's traveling difficult,
and, many times, with their hearts in their mouths, the two fugitives
were compelled to dart for a few hundred yards along a road, though
every highway leading to Jemelle--which seemed to be a German
rendezvous--was choked with troops and supporting wagon-trains.
Near Grupont, they found a woman sitting on the bank of a road, beside
the body of a boy, six years old.
"Can we be of any service, Madame?" Croquier asked, stopping.
"Not unless you can raise the dead," she answered bitterly, but
dry-eyed. "See you, Monsieur, my little Theophile was playing with a
toy gun, a thing of wood, Monsieur, and painted red, which shot a cork
on the end of a string, when the Germans came.
"'He will learn to shoot a real gun some day,' an officer said, 'kill
the young viper before he learns to bite.' So they shot him and marched
on, laughing."[10]
There was little to say, little comfort to give. Though every moment
was precious, Horace and his companion dug a grave and twisted two
boughs into a rude cross. They left the woman sitting there, but
weeping and more content. Owing to this delay, it was already daylight
before they reached the Lesse River, where they might hide for the
night.
Horace was slightly in advance, when, quite suddenly, he saw a German
soldier on the path, not more than twenty yards ahead of him. He ducked
into the bushes, Croquier, who was behind him, following suit.
The soldier heard the rustling and, though Horace had hidden so quickly
that he had not been seen, the soldier pointed his rifle at the point
where he had heard the noise and called:
"Who's there? Come out, or I fire!"
In a flash Horace saw the danger to Croquier, for the story of the
"captive Kaiser" had traveled far and wide. Should the hunchback be
seen and suspected, his death was certain. The boy parted the bushes
and stepped out. He answered, in German:
"I am here."
The soldier dropped the butt of his rifle on the ground, seeing an
unarmed boy. To all his questions Horace replied truthfully, except
that he said he was alone. He stated that he was an American, hoping to
make his way into France and there take ship for America.
"Why didn't you go to Holland?" the soldier asked.
"I couldn't break through to the north," the boy answered.
"Then, if you're an American, why didn't you stay in Liége? You would
have been safe."
Horace looked the soldier firmly in the face.
"Would I have been safe?" he queried. "There was a woman on the road a
little way back," he continued, and told the story of the toy gun.
The German listened, without comment.
"I've passed through villages where your army has been," the boy
continued, "and I've seen--"
The soldier raised his hand.
"There's no need to tell me about it," he said, "I've seen it, too,
and I don't like it any more than you do. You're a boy and you know
nothing of war, but I tell you that sort of thing is bound to happen.
I'll admit that it's horrible. Many of us are sickened by it. But don't
believe that every German soldier is a brute. It's not true. War makes
savages and you'll find them in every army.
"Then," he continued desperately, "what is a man to do? We've got to
obey orders! Our officers tell us that a town is to be burned and
pillage is allowed. It's not the soldiers who organize firing parties
and order citizens to be lined up against a wall. Our officers do that.
"It's true that when you've been in the thick of blood all day, when
your brain is dulled by the terrific noise and every nerve is jangled
with the strain of fighting, when you see your friend fall dead by a
bullet shot by a sniper from some house, when you've only got to put a
bayonet to an inn-keeper's throat to get all the liquor you can drink,
why, things look different then. All the standards by which you're
accustomed to live have gone into the scrap-heap. You've gone back to
the days of barbarism. It's another world altogether. You don't feel
that you're the same person as the comfortable home-loving workman of a
month before."
Horace listened, his hopes for personal safety rising, for he realized
that his captor--if captor he should prove--was a man as well as a
soldier.
"The blame is on the officers, then?"
"No," the German answered, shaking his head, "the blame is on War, on
the horrible, necessary thing itself, War. The officers can't control
the cruelties which go hand-in-hand with war any more than we can,
at least, not individually. They are taught that an invaded country
must be terrorized. Should any officer weaken, he would be suspected
and refused promotion. They're as much a part of the system as we
are. The system is deliberately intended to wipe out the instincts of
kindliness. To be humane is to be weak. Still, I believe and most of us
believe that the system is right. War is war. It is a struggle for life
and death, not a duel of politeness. It is an appeal to force and the
only rule that it knows is force. War is war, and we're going to win if
we have to march on the corpses of men, women and children all the way
from here to the sea."
Suddenly his tone changed.
"Here comes an officer!" he said. "Quick, boy, hide! I will say
nothing!"
Horace slid into the bushes like a snake.
The officer came clanking by on the path, and Horace held his breath,
lest the soldier should change his mind, or lest, in the presence of
the officer, the force of military discipline should urge him to reveal
the presence of the fugitive. The soldier, however, simply stepped off
the path and saluted, as the officer passed with the customary insolent
swagger and negligent salute in reply.
When the sound of footsteps could no longer be heard, the soldier spoke
in a low voice.
"Stay where you are," he said. "Remember, I've not seen you. But if,
when you get to America, you hear stories of German brutality, tell
them your story that they may know the German soldier isn't cruel just
because he wants to be. It is that he must be. War is war."
He turned on his heel.
Horace was bursting to reply that the soldier's confession was a worse
indictment of Germany as a whole than if the outrages were merely due
to a few brutal individuals in the soldiery, but he restrained himself.
A faint rustling told of Croquier's approach.
"That was a plucky thing to do," he whispered. "You meant it to cloak
my being here."
"Of course."
"I'll not forget it," said the hunchback. "But we'd better move on
a bit, even though it's daylight. That soldier might repent of his
kindness or drop a word about having met an American. It's healthier
for us to be somewhere else."
"I'm ready to go," said Horace. He was beginning to have an acute
perception of the narrowness of his escape, for he saw that if there
had been two soldiers instead of one, neither would have dared to trust
the other, and, in all probability, he would have had a bayonet thrust
through him before there was time for any explanations.
Next evening the two fugitives crossed ridge after ridge, on the
high country to the south of the Lesse River, fortunately getting a
midnight meal from a peasant who had a small farm between Hour and
Pondrome. This man had picked up a great deal of information from a
German transport corps which had commandeered all his grain and all
his horses, leaving him poverty-stricken and unable to carry on the
work of his farm. The information meant little to the peasant, but
coupled with the items that Horace had been able to gather and that
Croquier had found out, it gave a definite picture of the German Army's
movements.
Thus they learned that, when leaving Liége, they had crossed the track
of the army under Von Kluck (of which Von Emmich's army was only an
advance guard). Soon after, they had crossed the path of the Second
Army, under Von Buelow. The transport corps which had taken the horses,
had come up from the south, from the Third Army, under the Duke of
Würtemberg.
"Then what's the army we passed yesterday?" asked the boy.
The hunchback considered the problem thoughtfully.
"That's right," he said, "there is another army in between, but a day's
march behind the rest. It seems," he continued, "that Von Kluck is
striking due west, evidently to flank Namur; Von Buelow is moving on
the forts themselves; Würtemberg's army is going to strike lower down,
probably at Dinant."
He paused, for emphasis.
"But what's this other army in between?"
He sat for a few moments, sunk in thought.
"Hadn't we better be going on?" suggested Horace.
"Yes," said Croquier, rousing himself. "I was just wondering where. I
think we'll have to try and cross the Meuse south of Dinant, between
that and the French frontier, which is only four miles away."
"Why not go directly to the French frontier?" asked the lad.
"Too heavily guarded," was the reply. "Our only chance is south of
Dinant. Luckily, I know a man who lives close to Waulsort. We ought to
reach his place this evening."
By starting early in the evening from the loft where they had hidden
all day, the fugitives reached the banks of the Meuse before midnight.
There, the Meuse is deep and wide, flowing at the bottom of a deep
valley. The hunchback skirted the woods in the direction of the little
farm that he knew and cautiously knocked on the door.
A white, drawn face looked out.
"We are peaceful peasants here!" said a sullen voice, with both terror
and hate in the tone.
"Sh! Pierre!" said the hunchback, "we are good Belgians, like
yourselves. Let us in quickly."
Surprised and unwillingly the peasant opened the door.
"It is the circus boy!" he exclaimed.
Croquier wasted no time in greetings.
"We must cross the river," he said. "I have information of value to the
French. You have a boat?"
"I did have," was the answer, "but the Germans took it to-day."
"Are they near here?"
"You can see the light of their fires."
"The river is guarded, I suppose?"
"Every foot of it."
"Yet we must cross."
"Swim, then," responded the peasant, laconically.
"Swim, carrying this?" retorted the hunchback, holding up the iron
cage, and showing the "captive Kaiser," while, in a few words, he
described the omen of victory.
The peasant nodded his head in evident appreciation of the symbol.
"The Germans must not be allowed to get it," he said, obviously more
interested in the fate of the bird than of his friend. "But there are
three men guarding the boat."
"Only three," said Croquier significantly; "there are three of us."
Horace shrank back as the meaning of the words became clear.
The hunchback looked at him.
"Remember Deschamps," he said. "Remember the curé, remember little
Jacques, and remember Mme. Maubin!"
Horace pulled himself together.
"There are three of us," he agreed.
The peasant had not spoken but, from a hiding-place in the frame of the
bed, he pulled out a long knife and offered it to Croquier.
"Keep it, you," said the hunchback; "I have my hands."
"And the boy?" asked the peasant.
"I've a pistol I took from a dead German near Liége," the boy answered,
showing it. "It's loaded."
"Too much noise," said the peasant, shaking his head.
"It's all I can do," protested the boy. "I haven't Croquier's grip, and
somehow, I couldn't use a knife. It's too much like murder."
"And you?" queried the hunchback, turning to his friend. "You dare? You
are not afraid?"
"Hear you!" the peasant answered. "My brother-in-law lives in a mining
village. There was a battle near by, the day before yesterday. They
made him march in front of the troops and he was killed by a French
bullet.
"A wounded French sergeant dragged himself to the house. My sister hid
him. Soon after, a German officer came. He asked for food. When my
sister commenced to get it ready, they complained that she was slow. He
struck her. He behaved like a brute and--"
"Well?" queried Croquier, as the man paused.
"The wounded sergeant," the peasant continued, "drew his pistol and
shot the German.
"Emile, my nephew, was there. The dying Frenchman asked for water. The
boy went to the well and brought some. When he returned, other Germans
were in the house. An officer asked him for the water. He answered,
politely enough:
"'In a minute, sir,' and gave a drink first to the wounded man."
"That was sure to bring ruin," said the hunchback. "A German always
thinks he is more important than any one else."
"The commanding officer immediately ordered Emile shot and his eyes
were bandaged. Then the officer changed his mind. He took off the
bandage and handed the boy a gun.
[Illustration: BOY HEROES OF THE FRONT.
_Courtesy of "Le Miroir."_
A Servian lad, sharpshooter, 12 years old, who fought gallantly at
Belgrade.
_Courtesy of "J'ai Vu."_
"Petit Jean" of the Zouaves, who won revenge against the Germans who
burned his French home.
_Courtesy of "Ill. London News."_
A Russian lad, 14 years old, full member of a gun crew, which saw much
action.]
"'Shoot the Frenchman, you!' he said. 'That will make you a good
German.'
"The boy took the gun, pointed it at the French sergeant, then wheeled
suddenly and fired point-blank at the German commander, who fell dead.
So," said the peasant slowly, "they first tortured my nephew and then
killed him. After that they set fire to the house and burned alive the
wounded man inside. My sister escaped from the burning house and told
me the story last night."[11]
"And she?"
"She went mad early this morning and drowned herself in the river. Do
you think I would let fear stop me from revenge?"
No more was said. They filed out of the farmhouse, creeping through
the forest down the steep slopes to the river below. At a tiny
landing-stage two German soldiers were standing.
The hunchback held up two fingers and the boy's spirits rose with
relief at the thought that he would not be compelled to take part in a
cold-blooded though necessary slaughter.
"Take the bird," whispered Croquier to him, "and, whatever happens, see
that the Germans do not get it. If you are about to be caught, throw
the cage in the river. Its weight will sink it."
"I will," said the boy. He would have said more, as his fingers closed
upon the iron ring, but his companions had slipped off into the
darkness.
The few minutes of waiting that followed seemed like hours. Far, far
away, there was a faint sound of cannonading, which, although the
boy did not know it, was the advance-guard knocking at the gates of
Namur. It rose and fell on the night breeze above the indistinguishable
murmur around him, born of the presence of hundreds of thousands of
men encamped on both sides of the river, of the rattle of harness, of
the hum of motor-vehicles and of the tramp of feet. A dull, angry red
flickered spasmodically in the sky, here and there, the reflections of
burning villages below.
Silently, so silently that it seemed to Horace as though he were
watching a play of shadows, two men arose from the ground behind the
sentries. The blue steel in the peasant's hand flashed in the faint
moonlight of an aged moon and the sentry fell with a choked cry. From
the other sentry's throat there came no sound and the dumb struggle
was a fearful thing to see. The hunchback's fingers, however, would
have strangled an ox, and, before a minute had passed, a dead man lay
on the ground, the iron grip still on his windpipe.
At that instant, Horace heard a voice humming the snatch of a German
song and the third sentry came along the path, returning to his post.
The boy fingered his revolver, but he could not bring himself to shoot
a man unprepared. His gorge rose at the thought. Yet, if he allowed
the sentry to pass, the alarm would be given and he and his companions
would be killed.
A trick of boyhood flashed through his mind.
Quickly seizing a dead branch which lay near by, he thrust it between
the sentry's legs as he passed, with a sudden jerk tripping him up, so
that he fell headlong from the narrow stony path into the bushes on the
side. Then the boy sped for the wharf like a deer.
"The third sentry!" he gasped.
There was no time for explanations. The two fugitives and the peasant
leaped into the boat and a few short, sharp strokes took them well into
the strong current of the river.
The sentry who had been tripped, quite unsuspicious and blaming only
the roughness of the path in the darkness, got up, grumbling, rubbed
himself where he had been bruised and searched for his spiked helmet,
which had fallen off.
These few seconds were salvation for the fugitives.
Before half a minute had elapsed, the sentry reached the landing-stage
and saw the stretched-out bodies of his comrades. Taken by surprise, he
lost another ten or twenty seconds staring around him before he caught
sight of the boat on the river.
Then, and not till then, did the sentry grasp that a surprise attack
had been made and that his fall on the path had been purposed and not
due to an accident. Raising his rifle, he fired, but the shots flew
wide.
"I heard the Germans couldn't shoot straight!" declared the hunchback,
in contempt. "Now I know it's true."
Horace thought the bullets were quite close enough, and when one of
them nipped the oar he was using and raised a sliver of wood from the
feathered blade, he had an uncomfortable feeling inside. But, before
the alarm could be widely given, the boat shot into the shadow of the
western bank and reached the shore in safety.
French advance posts took the three in charge as soon as they touched
land, and, when morning arrived, brought them before the ranking
officer. Horace was able to give but little information, but Croquier,
who had read widely of military tactics, was able to combine the
various items that he had gleaned during the escape to make a report of
great value and importance.
"You are sure," the officer asked him, "that, in addition to the armies
of Von Kluck and Von Buelow to the north, and the Duke of Würtemberg
and the Crown Prince to the south, there is another army, hurrying up
between?"
"We saw it, sir," Croquier replied.
"Under whose command?"
"I couldn't find out, sir."
The officer gnawed his mustache.
"Our air men report a gap in the German line, there," he said. "We're
counting on it."
"There isn't such a gap, sir," the hunchback insisted, earnestly.
"Every road we crossed was filled with troops, and, sir," he added,
"there seemed to be an independent siege-train. It looked like a
complete army."
"It would be hard to distinguish such a force from divisions of the
other armies," the officer said, "unless you had more facts than you
were able to gather, but I'll convey your information to headquarters.
It may prove very useful. Now, just what shall I do with you?"
"I'd like to fight, sir," said the hunchback, "if I could find some one
to guard the Kaiser."
The officer stared at him as though he thought Croquier had gone mad.
"What are you talking about," he said, "to 'guard the Kaiser'?"
The hunchback pointed to the cage in his hand, which he had positively
refused to give up to the orderly.
"Here's the Kaiser, sir," he said, "withered left arm and all!"
His questioner bent forward, as Croquier described the capture, and, in
spite of the responsibilities weighing upon him, the officer laughed
aloud.
"It is a true omen of victory!" he said. "Stay with this division. It
will bring us luck."
"I'll be glad to, sir," said Croquier.
"Do any of the men know about it?"
"It must be all over the camp by now, sir," the hunchback answered.
"I've told the story at least a dozen times this morning."
The colonel smacked his leg with delight.
"That bird," he said, "especially if we have to retreat, is worth half
a regiment of men. Next to good food, good spirits keep an army going.
You stay here and 'guard the Kaiser' yourself.
"As for the lad," he continued, turning to Horace, "why, we'll send you
on to Paris, the first chance we get. The front is no place for a boy,
and, in any case, military regulations are rigid against the presence
of non-combatants. Even war correspondents are not allowed, no matter
how strong their official credentials."
Horace would have protested, but he knew that while French military
discipline is not as machine-made as that of Germany, it is not less
strict. Boy-like, he trusted to chance that something might happen,
and, in any case, he would probably see a battle that day. If he could
just see one battle, he thought, he would be content, particularly if
it were a German defeat.
Partly owing to his capture of "the Kaiser," because of the pluck he
had shown in escaping from Liége, and partly owing to the stories he
had to tell of German atrocities in Belgium, Horace was very popular
with the "poilus,"[12] as the French soldiers familiarly called
themselves.
It was in conversation, that morning, with one of the veterans of
the army, a non-commissioned officer who had seen active service in
Morocco and Madagascar, and who was studying with the aim of winning
his shoulder-straps, that Horace gained his first clear idea of the
huge scale upon which modern war operations are conducted. Evidently
the veteran had worked out for himself the main elements of General
Joffre's plan, and Horace's information concerning the location of the
German troops revealed further developments of the campaign to the old
soldier's eyes. Resting in readiness to support the advance line should
the reserves be called on, the veteran delivered himself oracularly as
to the situation.
"The battle-line now," he said, "is a right angle running north from
Dinant to Namur and then west from Namur to Condé. The south to north
line, where we are now, is held by the Fourth French Army, under
General Langle de Cary. We're protected by the gorge of the Meuse, and
it's our little job to try and keep the Boches[13] from crossing.
"Namur is the bend of the angle. It is strongly fortified, with nine
forts in ring formation, and is held by the Belgian army under General
Michel. From Namur westward through Charleroi to Binche is held by the
Fifth French Army under General Lanrezac, and is protected by a narrow
river, the Sambre. Westward from Binche, through Mons to Condé, is held
by the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French, only lightly
protected by the Mons barge-canal. The first attack will fall on Namur.
I hear it has already started."
"It won't last long," interjected Croquier, "for the lad and I saw the
42-centimeter guns (16.5-inch howitzers) on their way to Namur. Once
those siege-guns get into position, the forts are gone. They won't be
able to stand ten shells apiece."
"The forts will hold for a week," the veteran answered, for he
discounted the rumors which had come of the power of the great
siege-guns. "In any case, they'll hold for three days, and that's
as long as necessary. So, you see, the English face Von Kluck, the
Belgians face Von Buelow--and we're holding Würtemberg's army."
"All very well," said the hunchback, "but, as I've told you, we saw
another army coming up through the Ardennes."
"If there were, our airmen would have seen it," said the veteran, "and
our staff would know all about it. You're mistaken, that's all. The
battle-line is just about the way I've said it and the real clash is
between the French and German systems of strategy."
"Are they very different?" asked Horace. "I should have thought that
strategy was pretty exact and every one worked in more or less the same
way."
"Don't think it for a moment!" the veteran replied earnestly. "German
strategy and French strategy are as far apart as the feelings of the
two races. They are the result of different principles. They work in
different ways. The German depends on massed force, the French on
individual courage; the German thinks mainly of attack and his favorite
word is 'annihilation,' the French thinks mainly of defense and his
favorite word is 'France.' It is for this war to show which of the two
is the stronger--German aggression or French defense.
"German strategy," he explained, "begins with the formation of an
extended line. In action it plans heavy massed attacks at various
points along a battle front, in order to keep the whole of the opposing
line engaged, while, at the same time, at least a full army corps is
thrown out on each end of the battle-line, two or three divisions of
cavalry being thrown out farther still, to act as a screen and hide the
movements behind it. This maneuver is for the purpose of curling round
the ends of an enemy's line, flanking it and, by cutting its line of
communication in the rear, rolling it up and annihilating it."
"That, I should think," said Horace, "needs a lot of men."
"It does," the veteran agreed, "and that is one of the reasons that
Germany never advances unless she has a big preponderance of men.
Don't think that because Germans seldom attack with equal forces they
must therefore be cowards. It is because their tactics are based
on the principle of flanking, enveloping and securing a decisive
victory, rather than the principle of saving men, taking advantage of
natural conditions and winning a number of small engagements. It is
terribly wasteful of men, but it produces big military results--when
successful--and an appalling human sacrifice, when unsuccessful.
"A German attack, therefore, my boy, means that you will have to suffer
a succession of driving blows directed at two or three points of the
main line, reënforced by a concentration of artillery far greater than
is possessed by any other army, coupled with wide flanking movements
by huge bodies of troops supported by cavalry and a very mobile field
artillery."
"All right," said the boy; "I understand that clearly. Now what's the
French idea?"
"French strategy," the veteran replied, "always presupposes the
necessity of being compelled to fight having an army less in numbers
but superior in individual dash and bravery. It is the problem of
winning a battle with a smaller number of men than the enemy. The
principle is that of a spring bent back to the utmost, which, when
released rebounds forward with tremendous force. We call it the
'strategic lozenge.'"
"I've heard of that," said Horace. "It's sometimes called the
'strategic square,' isn't it? It seems something like our baseball
diamond," and, with boyish animation, he explained the position of the
bases.
"It is very like," said the bearded poilu, smiling at the comparison of
military strategy with a baseball game; "perhaps I can explain it to
you in that way. In this strategic lozenge, the whole army is divided
in four parts. The rear, or the reserve army, is where you call 'home
base.' The fighting or operative corner is at 'second base,' and the
other two armies are at 'first base' and 'third base' respectively. You
understand the positions?"
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Panorama de la Guerre."_
"OUR ENEMIES SHOWED GREAT GALLANTRY."
German gunners saving their 77-mm. piece in the teeth of a French
infantry attack in the Argonne.]
"Of course," said the boy, "that's quite easy. But it doesn't look
particularly strong. I should think a long line, like the German one
you were telling me about, could come on both sides of that point, or
'second base' army and gobble it up."
"So it could," said the veteran, nodding appreciation of the lad's
perception, "if the 'second base' army stayed there to be gobbled
up. That, my boy, is exactly what it doesn't do. When the enemy line
advances, it is halted by this sharp point. The flanking movement is
impossible, because if the long line bends round the corner, it would
take several days for the ends to close in, and, when they did close
in, they would only be confronted by a new army, let us say at 'third
base.' Long before they could reach there, the fourth army, at 'home
base,' could have marched up to reënforce the operative corner and
smashed the weakened middle of the opposing line, which, with its
wings gone, would have no reserves on which to fall back."
"Great!" cried the boy. "Then the German army would be cut in half!"
"Precisely! It would! And, my boy, if the line be cut, then our armies,
which had broken through, could fall on the line of communications and
cut off the enemy's provisions and supplies.
"If, on the other hand, the German commanders saw this danger, which,
of course, they would, they could halt all along the extended line,
reënforcing from either side the masses thrown against the operative
corner."
"Ow!" said Horace, "that would be awkward."
"Yes," the veteran responded, "if there were no strategical reply. But
when the line halts, the three armies in reserve in the diamond can
be swung either to right or left. So, since they have only a short
distance to go, they can force the battle on their own chosen ground
much more quickly than the opposing troops--which are stretched out in
a long line--can come up to defend it."
"I don't see that," said Horace.
The veteran smiled.
"You don't see it," he said, "because you don't realize that the
Wonder of War is not the machines used by the men who wage it, but
the men themselves and the handling of them. Modern war, like ancient
war, consists only in the spirit of the fighters and the skill of the
commanders. There's not a great deal of difference between a bayonet
and flint knife, a rifle is but an explosive form of bow and arrow, and
the great 42-centimeter siege-gun of the Boches is only a sling-shot
made a little bigger and throwing a little farther. The morale of men,
my boy, and the strategy of generals are the wonders of war, as they
were in the days of Rameses, Cæsar and Napoleon. It's more difficult,
now, because you're moving millions of men and tens of millions of tons
of munitions and material.
"Let us take the strategy of the present situation, as the greatest
armies of the world face it this sunny summer morning. Namur is the
'second base' or operative corner. Paris is the 'home base.' Verdun
is 'first base.' Condé, to the extreme left of the English troops, is
'third base.' The German long line is bent round the angle. This has
been very skillfully done, for it enables the line to attack at any
point. But, see, we could throw our reënforcing fourth army on either
the left or the right wing in two days' time. Suppose we threw it on
the western wing. It would take at least two weeks before the enemy's
eastern wing could march up, even if it were good tactics to do so."
"Why?"
"Because of the enormous difficulty of moving hundreds of thousands
of men. No civilian has any idea of it. Suppose you want to move five
army corps--that's a quarter of a million men--how long do you think
it would take? Your easternmost corps would have to begin the march by
retreating at least thirty miles before they could begin to turn, in
order to leave room for the rest to turn inside them. The first army
corps would have to wait until the second countermarched in line with
it, both first and second would have to wait for the third, and four
corps would be idle while the fifth corps came into position.
"To deploy them in line would take weeks. Then, even after they had
been got in order and were marching from south to north, the corps
nearest to the battle line would have to mark time while the rest
pivoted on it. That would mean a couple more days' lost time. The same
delay would arise when it was necessary to pivot the line in position
for attack. In addition to that, my boy, there would be the waste of
time in strategical handling caused by the change of direction. New
lines of communication would have to be established, new supply depots
built, new routes mapped out, rolling stock shifted to other railway
systems, all the plans which the General Staff had made before the
opening of the campaign must needs be altered and the huge body of
officers would have to receive new orders so that they might learn the
entire change of tactics in detail. Meantime, the battle would be over."
"Well, then," said Horace, scornfully, "German strategy is all
nonsense."
"Don't jump to conclusions," warned the veteran. "There's another side
to it. Suppose that the operative corner is attacked so fast and so
furiously that, instead of being able to retreat upon its reserves
in good order, it is annihilated, what then? In that case, the enemy
can plunge right in between the supporting armies, going to what, I
suppose, you would call the 'pitcher's box,' cut the dissevered troops
apart and deal with them one at a time.
"Everything depends upon the operative corner, especially on its
tenacity. This strategy is possible in the French Army, where
individual courage and resiliency is the highest of all armies of the
world. It is only equaled by some of the Irish and Highland Scotch
regiments of the British Army, and the Bersaglieri and other corps of
the Italian Army. It is not suitable to the bulldog tactics of the
English, which depend on wearing down the enemy; nor to the 'wolf-pack'
system of the Germans, which depends on mere weight of numbers."
Horace leaned forward, thoughtfully.
"There's a good deal more to this than I thought," he said.
"The operation of war on land," said the veteran, "is one of the most
marvelous processes known to the human brain. There is no machine so
enormous, none that requires so much detail and fineness of adjustment.
I've studied it from a soldier's point of view, ever since I've been in
the army, and now that I'm trying to get my commission, I'm studying it
all the closer.
"Men don't win a war. Guns don't win a war. Food and munitions don't
win a war. You can have ten million men and a hundred million tons of
food and munitions and what good will they be unless the food gets to
the men, the munitions to the guns, and the men and guns to the front?
What good will it do then, unless the men have, first, the spirit to
fight, and second, the skill to fight?
"You say that the prophecy about the bird declares that America will
have to join the war. Perhaps. But if the United States had started to
prepare ten years ago, she would still have been twenty years too late.
To expect to make an army by waiting until it is needed, is just about
as sensible as to wait for the sowing of wheat until the harvest-time
when the crop is needed. And when you get back to America, you can tell
them so."
The poilu wiped his forehead, for he had become thoroughly roused on
the point. Then, after a moment, he continued:
"To return to our strategy question. The present position of the
French and English armies, supporting Namur, is that of an operative
corner. Probably we will be driven back, but it is on the springiness
of our resistance that the campaign hangs. The more we retreat, the
stiffer grows the spring, for we are falling back on reënforcements
and shortening our lines of communication and transport all the time.
The more the enemy advances, the weaker his line grows, for he is
losing men which he cannot replace and is lengthening his lines of
communication and transport all the time. Sooner or later, the rebound
of the spring is stronger than the force pressing back, and then, if
the pressure is weakened the least bit, the spring darts back. That is
the rebound or recoil. It is the rebound which will save France."
"Then you expect to retreat?"
"What would be the use of an operative corner if we didn't retreat on
the masses of maneuver?" the veteran retorted. "We all know that. The
public won't understand it, of course, and a good many of the younger
soldiers are apt to lose their heads over it, but the statesmen know,
the generals know, the officers know, and arrangements are already made
for it in advance. We are well prepared.
"The two greatest armies that the world has ever seen are facing each
other, and the two great principles of strategy are to be fought out,
as well as the moral principle between a nation that breaks its word
and one that keeps it. Within a month will be settled, perhaps forever,
the greatest question in military tactics--which is better, the massed
line and flanking movements of the Germans or the strategic diamond of
the French.
"If Namur holds, you will see the supporting armies swing up against
one or the other side of the long German line and send it flying
back. If Namur falls resistingly, you will see the whole operative
corner from Condé through Mons, Binche, Thuin, Charleroi, Namur,
Dinant, Givet, and Montmedy to Verdun narrow its lines, shorten its
communications and draw closer and closer in. The spring will be
stiffening for the rebound. If the corner is smashed and the Germans
break clear through--the whole war is lost, the whole world is lost!"
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Report of Belgian Royal Commission.
[10] Report of French Commission of Inquiry.
[11] This happened in the village of Lourches, near Douchy. The boy's
name was Emile Despres and he was fourteen years old.
[12] "Poilu" means hairy, and conveys the sense of shaggy strength.
[13] The Germans are called "Boches" by the French and "Huns" by the
British. The origin of the word "Boche" is disputed; the word "Hun" is
used to denote ruthless barbarity.
CHAPTER V
THE DISPATCH-RIDER
"Do you suppose," said Horace, after the veteran had gone, "that they'd
let me join in the fight? It may begin any time, some one said."
"You wouldn't be any use," the hunchback answered, shaking his head.
"What could you do?"
"I could try the cavalry, I ride pretty well," suggested the boy. "I
used to live on a ranch when I was a kid."
His companion smiled indulgently.
"What do you know of bugle calls? What practice have you had with a
saber? How much do you know about cavalry maneuvers? Why, boy, you'd
bungle up a cavalry charge so badly that the kindest thing they could
do would be to tie your hands together and let the horse do all the
work."
Horace looked crestfallen but he knew his comrade was in the right.
"I'd like to be in the artillery, too," he said, "but I don't know
anything about guns, and that's a fact. But the infantry?"
"You'd be no better there," Croquier answered frankly. "You couldn't
even pack your kit. You don't understand the orders. You've never
drilled. You don't know the first thing about it. With continuous work
eight hours a day, it takes at least two years to make a real soldier.
You don't know how to use a single weapon. You couldn't fix a bayonet.
You don't know the workings of a Lebel rifle, which, by the way, is the
only repeating rifle used in modern armies."
"What are all the rest?"
"Magazine rifles."
"What's the difference?"
This time Croquier was at fault. He called to a soldier who was
strolling near by, smoking his pipe.
"As a matter of fact," the soldier said, when the question was put to
him, "all magazine rifles are repeaters, though they are not called so.
The Lebel is an old type and has a tube fitted in the rifle under the
barrel, the cartridge being fed onto the carrier by a spiral spring and
plunger, the advancing bolt carrying the cartridge into the chamber."
"And the other armies, what gun have they got?"
"Germans and Belgians have a Mauser, Austrians use a Mannlicher--and
the British have a short Lee-Enfield. All of them have magazines under
the bolt way for containing cartridges and can be loaded with a clip,
which is quicker."
"Which is the best?"
"The Lee-Enfield, by far, so the experts say," the rifleman answered,
"because it's shorter, easier to handle, and carries ten cartridges in
its magazine against the Mauser's five. But," and he patted his rifle
affectionately, "I like my Lebel better than any of them, maybe because
I'm used to it. The Mannlicher, though, is very accurate. It's a good
weapon for sniping."
"This lad," the hunchback remarked, "wants to jump right into the
fighting-line without joining the army or ever having handled a gun."
"You'd get shot for nothing, boy," the soldier replied, halting as he
strode off. "One trained soldier is worth fifty raw civilians. The
greenhorn wastes ammunition, eats food, and is no manner of good. He's
sick half the time. When there's an advance he wants to lead the way
and runs into the fire of his own artillery. When there's a retreat,
he starts a panic. When he's on sentry-duty he hears a suspicious noise
about once in every three minutes. When he's told to do something he
doesn't like, he tries to argue about it. If you want to be a soldier,
boy, join it in the right way and learn your soldiering like a man.
Then, if a war comes, you can do your duty until you're killed; or, if
you're invalided home crippled, or blinded, or with a serious wound
which will prevent you from further fighting, you can thank your stars
that you were born lucky."
"And I did so want to fight!" said Horace mournfully, as the
infantryman moved away.
"You may have the chance," remarked the hunchback, a curious glint in
his eyes. "How long do you think the war will last?"
"A month or two?" hazarded the boy.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it lasted a year or two," came the reply,
"that is, unless the Germans smash our lines before we have a chance to
stiffen them."
"Well," said Horace, "if it lasts a year or two, I can learn!"
"Yes," said Croquier, "we'll all learn."
That afternoon, the officer sent for Horace and his companion.
"Namur has fallen!" he said, as soon as they were alone.
Croquier's jaw fell.
"Already, sir!" he said. "I thought it wouldn't hold out very long."
"Yes," said the officer, "Von Buelow seems to have learned from Liége.
You were there, were you not?"
"I was, sir," the hunchback answered; "we lived just a mile from Fort
Embourg."
"Did you see any of the fighting?"
"Only the bombardment."
"Or hear any details?"
"Yes, sir," Croquier replied, "mainly from the wounded. I was in
hiding, though, and the lad, here, heard more than I did."
Thus prompted, Horace told all that he knew of the story of the attack
on Liége, of the fearful loss of life in the massed attacks and of the
valor of the defense, as he had been told by the wounded officers and
men nursed by Aunt Abigail.
"They never gave us a chance like that," the officer sighed. "Namur had
no defense. Von Buelow's too wise a fox of warcraft to waste men when
guns will do the trick. It seems he brought his 42-centimeter guns into
position five miles from Namur about sundown yesterday. All the ranges
had been tested out by the bombardments during the two days before with
the lighter guns.
"Last night the real bombardment commenced. The shells were directed
into the trenches, first, where General Michel and his men were eagerly
awaiting the chance to mow down Germans as Leman did at Liége. They
never saw a German. The hail of death on those trenches was so furious
that no troops could live through it. There was no resistance. The
guns of the forts could not reply, they were outranged. There was no
possibility of a counter-attack, for scouts reported the Germans in
force. For ten hours a scythe of shells swept the defenses. Not a man
lifted his head above the parapet but was killed. The trenches were
leveled flat. Few officers survived.
"By morning," the officer continued, "the Belgians could stand the
tornado of slaughter no longer. The decimated troops fled from the
trenches, leaving a gap between Forts Cognelée and Marchovelette. The
Germans then turned their fire on the forts. Fort Maizeret received
1200 shells, at the speed of twenty to the minute, but was only able to
reply with ten rounds. In that sixty minutes, the fort was reduced to
a mass of crumpled masonry and a few shreds of armor-steel. Others of
the forts, on which the 42-centimeters were turned, were blown to atoms
with less than half a dozen shells. By ten o'clock this morning, five
of the forts were silenced and the German infantry poured through the
gap.
"We sent a cavalry brigade, mainly of Chasseurs d'Afrique, and two
Turco and Zouave regiments up to stiffen General Michel's defense, but
they arrived too late to be of any use to the Belgian infantry. It
would have been madness for Michel to have faced that fire any longer.
"Before the war, we had expected," the officer continued, "that the
forts of Namur would hold the enemy back for three weeks. After Liége,
we hoped that they would hold out three days. They did not hold out
three hours. Apparently there is nothing made by the hands of man that
can resist the incredible destructiveness of those huge high-explosive
shells. Our point of defense will have to be at Charleroi. Our airmen
report a gap between the armies of Von Buelow and Würtemberg. You said,
this morning, that you had seen troops in between. It is excessively
important. Tell me again, exactly, and with all the detail that you can
remember."
Croquier repeated his information of the morning, Horace supplementing
from time to time. When he had finished, the officer tapped his fingers
meditatively on the table.
"You're sure you can't tell me where they came from, who commands them,
or what regiments they are?"
Croquier was silent.
"I'm not sure," said Horace, after racking his brain, "but I think the
woman whose boy was killed, said that Saxons had done it."
"Saxons, h'm! Well, that's a slight clew. I hope you're wrong, because
the Saxons are about the best troops in the German Army, pretty clean
fighters, too, as a rule. I hope you're wrong," he repeated; "we're in
a desperate position and we need three days' time."
Little, however, did the officer, with all his special information,
suspect the nearness of the impending blow. Even at the time that he
was speaking, a detachment of German hussars had crossed the Meuse near
Namur, ridden through Charleroi and trotted on towards the Sambre. At
first they were mistaken for British hussars, to whose uniform theirs
was similar. Soon, however, they were recognized and driven back, with
the loss of a few killed and wounded. Simultaneously, an artillery
engagement began between the armies of Lanrezac and Von Kluck at the
bridges above and below Charleroi.
In the afternoon, that part of Langle de Cary's army to which Horace
and Croquier had irregularly attached themselves moved north. The two
fugitives followed, not because they were wanted, but Croquier had
been told to stay and Horace, although he had been told to go back
with the refugees, had not been served with a point-blank military
order. He decided to chance it, not being punishable for disobedience
as a soldier. The boy was wild to see a battle, if there should be
one, but Croquier forbade his attaching himself to any infantry
regiment. He, himself, had made friends with one of the gunners of a
"Soixante-Quinze" and the battery was delighted with being chosen as
the escort of the "captive Kaiser." The battery-commander took the boy
under his protection, feeling that this was better than setting him
adrift and took on himself the responsibility of seeing that the lad
should be sent on to Paris that night.
"But I won't see the fight, back here with the artillery," persisted
Horace.
A gunner looked round at him with his mouth twisted on one side.
"I hope you're right, my boy," he said. "I'm thinking we'll see too
much of it."
"I don't want to see a lot of battles," reiterated the lad, "I just
want to see one!"
As though his words had conjured it up, with startling suddenness,
rifle-fire broke out near by. It sounded like the crackling of dry wood
in an immense bon-fire. Horace looked up eagerly and listened for the
heavy booming of the artillery. None was to be heard.
"Don't they use big shells, except on forts?" he asked.
"They'll come before long," the gunner answered. "Something's going to
happen. I feel it in the air."
Infantry regiments swung by, marching north, with the quick, French
step.
Though late in the afternoon, the sun was hot, the air sultry. The men
were tired, grim, and silent. The faces were young, but every man had
white eyebrows and either a gray beard or a gray stubbly chin. It took
a moment's thought to realize that this was the effect of dust and not
a regiment of old men. So thick was the dust that even the red of the
breeches was absolutely hidden as the men marched on.
From over the hill, a machine-gun began its continuous death-bark.
"That means close action," said the hunchback. "They must be on us."
Horace felt his desire to see a battle slipping away quite rapidly.
"Probably action against cavalry," Croquier continued. "I hope so.
We're considerably too close for an infantry attack to be comfortable."
Then, with majestic grandeur, the heavy artillery began to speak. As it
opened, the crackling of the rifle-fire spread all round the horizon
and the machine-guns yapped from a hundred points ahead. But, over
all, the great guns boomed. It was as though, in the middle of a fight
between terriers, two lions had sprung into the arena and deafened all
other noise with their roars.
"Clear for action!"
At the words of the battery commander, every man of the crew of the
"Soixante-Quinze" sprang to his post. The gun-numbers, who had been
clustered about the "captive Kaiser," reached their places with a
single spring.
"Attention!"
[Illustration: _French Official Photograph._
FRENCH INFANTRY ADVANCING.]
[Illustration: _From "Illustrirte Zeitung."_
GERMAN INFANTRY ADVANCING.]
Horace watched the deft movements of the artillerists, as they made
sure that the sighting-gear was in place and that the training and
elevating levers were working smoothly.
"You wanted to see fighting, Horace," said Croquier, pointing with his
finger, "well, look!"
In the dull, hot afternoon haze, the boy saw black figures which seemed
no larger than ants run up the hillside, far, far ahead and then
suddenly disappear as they threw themselves down. Jets of up-thrown
earth showed where the shells were striking, and a rising cloud of
dust, like to that raised by a tooth-harrow being dragged over plowed
land on a dry day, told, to accustomed eyes, the terrible tragedy of
the curtain of leaden hail.
"Gun-layers--forward!" came the sharp command.
A pause.
"That twisted willow, two points this side of the church-steeple."
"We see it."
"Use that!"
The commander gave the elevation and the range.
The guns were laid, the breeches returning smoothly to rest with their
burden of death.
"All ready, sir."
"First round!"
Fear lay heavy on Horace, but an overmastering desire to watch the
modern gladiatorial arena, drove him to look.
The firing number bent down to seize the lanyard.
"Fire!"
His experience at Beaufays had taught the boy to put his fingers to
his ears, but it was the first time he had heard a .75, the famous
"Soixante-Quinze" which the French believed--and rightly--to be the
best field-gun in the world. It cracked deafeningly, stridently. The
flame which darted out of the muzzle was long and thin and seemed to
lick the air as though envious of the shell's flight. The smell of
the powder was acrid and bitter, somewhat like the taste of an unripe
persimmon, Horace thought.
"One thousand, five hundred!" the battery commander called.
And Number One of the gun crew repeated:
"One thousand, five hundred."
"Fire!"
The men worked as in a frenzy, loading, extracting, and loading again.
The shells, twelve to a minute, poured out of the flame-belching muzzle
of the gun.
The gun-crew fell back to mechanical automatic speed, muscle and sinew
moving with the precision of things of steel. Cartridge-cases littered
the ground in irregular piles, smoking for a minute where they fell.
"Cease firing!"
The gunners drew their hands over their foreheads, black with dust and
sweat.
"Hot work!" said one.
On the hillside, far away, the little dots who were men jumped up to
run ahead and then fell to earth once more. Some never rose again.
"Is the enemy on this side of the hill?" Horace asked.
"No," answered Croquier, "on the other side."
"Then the Germans can't see us?"
"No."
"Why, then, do our fellows go ahead in short bursts? If they're not in
sight of the Germans, what difference does it make if they stand up or
lie down?"
"The difference between being shot and not being shot," replied the
hunchback. "A modern rifle, using smokeless powder, will send a
bullet 700 yards with an almost flat trajectory, that is to say, the
bullet does not have to curve upwards much in order to reach its mark.
Therefore every man standing up, within the distance of 700 yards, who
is in line with that bullet, can be hit by it. A man, lying down, can
only be hit by a bullet which is dropping to earth, so that the zone of
danger is low. For example, a man standing at 1000 yards range is in a
danger zone 65 yards wide, within which he will be shot; if lying down,
the danger zone is reduced to 13 yards, or, in other words, he is five
times as likely to be shot when standing up, irrespective of the fact
whether the enemy can see him or not."
The sonorous tumult of the battle increased steadily. The dome of the
sky beat like the parchment of an angry drum. High-explosive shell
and shrapnel was bursting overhead, filling the air with splinters
of shell and bullets. Now and again a clang on the gun-shield of the
"Soixante-Quinze" told of some fragment that would have brought death
to the gun-crew in default of such protection.
Horace, crouched down behind the gun-shield, watched a tall thistle,
swaying in the breeze a couple of arm's-lengths away, and found
himself wondering what would happen to him if he were lying there.
He never saw the answer to his question. Suddenly, the thistle was no
more to be seen, probably cut athwart by a splinter of shell.
In the heat of that August afternoon, Horace shivered. He was not
precisely afraid, his experience in the woods near Embourg had freed
him of fear, but death seemed very near. If this were battle, he had
seen enough.
"Ah!" muttered a gunner, "they're falling back."
The wooded hill became alive with columns of infantry. They broke out
of the woods, some still holding their formations under the orders of
their officers, others scattered and disorganized. The roar of the
artillery took on a wilder howl, as the high-explosive shells gave
place to a larger proportion of the shriller-voiced shrapnel.
"They think they have us on the run," remarked the gunner.
"They have!" said Croquier gravely.
The infantry drew nearer, passing on the road just below the gun
position, stricken, beaten, war-dulled--and dismayed. It does not take
many minutes of fighting in the open against machine-guns to break
the spirit and numb the hope of victory. A machine-gun spitting 600
bullets to the minute, swaying its muzzle from side to side like a jet
of murder, is the material embodiment of the very spirit of slaughter.
These men had seen it and terror had taken up its dwelling in their
eyes. Panic and discipline struggled for the mastery.
But, as always, blood tells. The guns belched death behind them and
carnage rode, shrieking, on the blast, but their officers were there,
cool and masterful. On the very verge of disgraceful rout, the French
steadied to the words of command from leaders whom they not only
admired and respected, but loved.
In spite of the magnificent evidence of courage, Horace groaned.
"We're licked!"
Tattered remnants of troops, wounded, half-delirious, many without
rifle or pack, surged back. The torrent of smitten humanity filled the
road. The weaker were pushed into the ditch. Not a man but had bleared
eyes looking wildly out of sweat-rimmed sockets. The way was littered
with mess-tins, cartridge belts, kepis and broken rifles. But training,
only a little less strong than the instinct of life itself, came to
their aid. The sight of an officer brought the hand to the forehead in
salute, and the gesture brought back the sense of control. Even as the
regiments fled, they reformed.
Horace bit his parched lips.
"Are we going to stay here and be killed?" he cried.
The hunchback, his iron will unmoved by the imminent peril, answered in
a perfectly even tone,
"None of the guns have moved."
Harsh and wild, the air overhead screamed like a living thing. Men
dropped on every side. The road of flight was a shambles.
"Won't they even try to save the guns?" gasped the boy, battling with
panic.
"Second round!" remarked the battery commander, as calmly as though on
maneuvers.
"A man!" declared Croquier admiringly, under his breath.
"But everything's lost!" gasped Horace.
"Is it?" said the hunchback.
"In echelon!" came the order, followed by correction and range for each
gun.
"Eight hundred and fifty!"
"... and fifty!"
"Fire!"
The battery had scarcely fired, the first shell was but half-way on
its mission of revenge, when, as though at a signal, a dozen other
batteries replied.
A cloud of men in iron-gray uniforms topped the hill, met the
concentrated fire of those batteries of seventy-fives and melted into a
gray carpet on the earth which would never stir again.
Sweeping up through the scattered and broken troops, as jaunty and
full of fight as though they had not been marching for hours and had
not encountered the débris of a defeat, came the French reserves. They
cheered as they passed the battery.
"Back us up!" they cried.
"Third round," said the battery commander.
The guns roared again, and under their fire, the Germans broke and
fled, deserting some of their guns. As they wavered and gave way, the
French cavalry, who had been waiting their chance, charged down and
cleared the hillside of the last invader.
"Cease firing!" came the order.
The gunners threw themselves down on the grass to rest.
Then, from the rear, came a new sound, a whip-like crackle, of little
sharp explosions, rapidly coming nearer.
"That's a queer machine-gun," said one of the gunners, listening.
"It's not a gun," put in Horace, whose composure had begun to return
when the cavalry made their triumphant dash, "it's a motor-cycle. I
used to ride one in Beaufays."
The dispatch-rider whizzed by on the road below. The men watched him,
and, ignoring their own dangers, one of the gunners remarked,
"It takes a hero or a fool to risk his neck in that part of the work!"
A dragoon galloped up with orders for the officers of the battery.
"Limber up!"
Instantly all was excitement. The gun was to take up a new position.
The German infantry rush had failed, but the artillery halted not its
tempest of shell.
Three of the horses had been killed. This left only five for the gun.
They strained at their collars, but the wheels had sunk in the soft
soil.
The shrapnel whined murderously. Another horse fell.
"Peste!" cried the hunchback.
He thrust the cage into Horace's hands, ran up to the wheels of the
gun, where two gunners were lifting, shouldered the men aside, stooped
and put his tremendous strength into the heave and the gun jerked
forward.
"Hey, but you are strong!" said the sergeant.
"But yes," the hunchback replied, "I am almost as good as a horse."
The guns moved off at a sharp trot.
Horace and the hunchback jumped on the rear of the ammunition wagon.
They had not gone a hundred yards when a shrapnel bullet struck one of
the gun-drivers in the head and he fell.
The horses commenced to plunge.
There was a moment's confusion, and, before any one could say a word,
Horace had dropped from the wagon, run forward to the gun and leapt on
the plunging horse. Old memories of the ranch came back to him and the
rearing animal quieted at once.
The gun-team trotted on.
The keen eye of the major caught the strange figure on the horse.
"Where do you come from, boy?"
Horace saluted, trying hard to do it with military precision, and
explained.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
"THEY DO NOT PASS!"
"THE VETERAN'S ADVICE."
Two famous pictures by Georges which awoke red-hot interest in France
at the beginning of the war.]
"But you may be shot, there!" the major remarked, in a conversational
tone of voice, as he cantered beside the gun-team.
"If you'll excuse me, sir," said the boy, "but I'm in no more danger
than the rest of us."
"But that of course!"
"It is 'that of course' for me, too, sir, if you'll let me," Horace
said.
The major smiled under his grizzled mustache and galloped on.
The road was cut into deep ruts and great care was needed in driving,
for the ditches were filled with wounded. To lighten the loads, the
gunners ran alongside the guns and ammunition wagons. Darkness fell
over the scene. The battle came to a lull. Night covered the slaughter.
Never in his life before had Horace been so glad to see the dark.
The boy's first battle was over.
None of the gun crew, now, rode on the limbers. Every available point
on which a man could lie or sit was crowded with wounded. Many of the
wounds were terrible, but few of the sufferers complained.
One man was lifted off, dying, as the battery stopped for a moment.
"Is it the end?" he asked.
"I'm afraid so, my boy," said the major.
"My mother wished to give a son to France. Tell her she is victorious!"
and he died.
Said another, when the surgeon told him that one leg would have to be
amputated,
"Only one, my doctor? Then France has made me a gift of a leg. I was
willing to give her both."
The battery passed on through the village. There were no cries of
welcome. The women gave food to the soldiers, all silently. With a
noble restraint, moreover, none of the women raised a word of blame.
The men drove through with hanging heads, downcast, humiliated by the
mute reproach in the eyes of the villagers, who knew they were being
abandoned to their fate by their own army, which was powerless to aid
them. The morrow would bring ruin, brutality, and massacre.
It was late in the evening before the battery halted and Horace took
his turn in watering the horses and doing the chores of a driver
attached to a gun. Croquier, in a manner attached to the battery, felt
he could be of principal service in trying to secure information. When
he returned, his expression was full of concern.
"What's happened?" Horace asked sleepily.
The reply came like a shot from a gun,
"The Germans have reached Charleroi!"
Horace pondered for a minute to think what this might mean, then raised
himself on his elbow, suddenly wide-awake.
"That smashes the corner!" he cried. "They've pierced our line! The
whole strategy is gone!"
"Not quite," said the hunchback grimly, "but unless something happens
to-morrow, it will be smashed."
Therein, Croquier was right. The next day, Saturday, August 22, Von
Buelow attacked Charleroi in full strength. The two main bridges east
and west of the city, at Chatelet and Thuin, fell under the impact
of the combined light and heavy field howitzers, and, before noon,
Charleroi was in German hands. Von Buelow thrust swiftly round the
eastern end of the Fifth French Army, in order to roll up its flank and
force it into the arms of Von Kluck for annihilation.
"Unless something happens to-morrow!" Croquier had said.
That something did happen.
The Chasseurs d'Afrique, Turco and Zouave troops which had been
detached from the Fourth Army to help the Belgians at Namur, arrived
unexpectedly in Charleroi during the middle of the engagement. They
were too late to keep the Germans from entering the city, but not
too late to drive them out again, not too late to put a spike in Von
Buelow's plan to flank the Fifth Army.
In all the history of modern war, there has never been more savage
street-fighting, hand to hand, tooth and claw, sword and bayonet, than
in Charleroi. The Germans were more than five to one, but they could
not stand cold steel. The onslaught of the French colonials was a spume
of wrath that the invaders dared not face. They fled like gray rats.
Then, upon doomed Charleroi, crashed the full force of the German field
artillery. Church steeples and foundry chimneys fell like dry sticks
before a whirlwind's blast, factories crumbled into ruin under the
disintegrating effects of high explosive shells, burying French and
Belgian defenders in the ruins. The blue sky overhead was gray with the
web of flying steel, the gutters of the streets ran red.
Trebly reënforced, the Germans charged Charleroi again. Here were no
modern tactics, here was no battle born in the military schoolroom,
but a savage, primitive combat, where each man fired, stabbed, thrust
and clubbed to save himself and to fell his foe. Though outnumbered ten
to one, the French drove the sharp-biting rats, back, back, and back
beyond the outskirts of the town.
Again the artillery deluged Charleroi with an avalanche of shell.
Again the German infantry charged forward, now twenty to one, all
fresh troops, against the wearied but still defiant Turco and Zouave
regiments. The torrent was irresistible and Charleroi was again in
German hands.
This was the moment for which the French artillery had been waiting.
No sooner was Charleroi filled with German troops than the French guns
hammered at the shattered town. The French Army, however, had almost
ignored the development of howitzers, which proved so valuable to the
Germans. They had but few of their 3.9-inch (105 mm.) and 5.7-inch (155
mm. Rimailho) guns available for a reply to the German batteries and
they could not retake the town. About midnight, the city burst into
flames.
That same Saturday had been one of disaster, also, for the Fourth
Army, though in a lesser degree. Horace had partaken in the retreat
from Givet, though, naturally, he did not know the character of the
engagement, the night before. All next morning he stayed by the
battery, acting as a driver, but the battery was not in action more
than an hour. The army suffered heavily, but retreated in good order,
the line stiffening, and holding the Germans in check. The battery
slept that night on heaps of straw in a little chapel.
A dispatch-rider on a motor-cycle whizzed by. He was traveling thirty
or forty miles an hour on a road which was nothing more than a series
of holes and ruts. A few guns fired from time to time, but the air
reverberated with the grumbling breathing of that master of modern
war--petrol.
At half-past two o'clock the sergeant came.
"Get up there, Battery Two. There's coffee ready outside."
The little red lamp over the altar in the chapel burned steadily and
comfortingly; the red camp fires in the village streets wavered in the
chill air of the early morning. A heavy dew had fallen. The German guns
were beginning to speak in the distance, but, as it seemed, sleepily
and sulkily.
"Those are the ten- and thirteen-centimeter pop-guns," said a gunner,
listening.
"And they've all the seventy-sevens in the world, there," added
another, "hear those bunches of sixes coming over!"
The sky was still dark enough to show the distant flashes of the
heavier guns, like the glare from the eyes of a herd of giant beasts of
prey.
As the day lightened, in the half-dawn, the columns of earth upthrown
by the shells seemed like gray specters that appeared for a moment and
then vanished. An 8.2-inch (220 mm.) shell buried itself in the ground
behind the battery, drawn up at the edge of the village, waiting for
orders to take up position, and then, thirty seconds after, exploded
like a miniature volcano.
From the distance came the clacking of the motor-cycle.
"That's the dispatch-rider again," muttered Horace, turning to watch
the flying rider, though his ears warned him of a heavy shell humming
on its way, and a few seconds later, the wind of its passage blew cold
upon his cheek.
The next second, the earth heaved itself up as though a subterraneous
monster were emerging from its lair, and the 10.1-inch (270 mm.)
shell[14] burst with a slow majestic grandeur. A tree near by, at
whose roots the shell had fallen and burrowed, was tossed into the air
like a twig. In the pattering silence as the fragments of the shell and
earth hurled outward, a shrill human scream penetrated.
Through the cloud of salmon-colored dust, with its gagging acrid fumes,
could be seen the motor-cycle. It had plunged off sharply from the
road, jumped a low ditch and was stuck fast in a thick, dense hedge.
The motors were running still. The rider--
Horace jumped from the back of the wheel-horse, followed by a couple
of the gunners, and ran across the road. The lad stopped the motor
while the gunners lifted the cyclist from the saddle. He was terribly
mangled. Horace turned his eyes away, in spite of himself.
"Let me go on!" cried the rider, in a voice so full of agony that it
was almost a screech. "I have dispatches."
They laid him down on the grass by the edge of the road, grass scorched
and crispened by the explosion.
The dispatch-rider looked up and saw the major, who had hurried to the
scene.
"Dispatches! They are life or death for France!" he gasped.
The major stooped down and the wounded man guttered out a few
sentences, while feebly trying to reach the paper he bore.
Life was ebbing fast, but though the man's sufferings must have been
intense, he said no word of himself. Only he cried out again.
"I have dispatches!"
Then the major, in order that the gallant soldier should not die in the
despair of an unaccomplished trust, answered, in a firm tone,
"They shall be delivered. I promise it."
The dispatch-rider smiled through all his pain.
"My France!" he whispered proudly, and tried to salute the officer.
The major laid his hand lightly on the terribly torn body.
"It is not you, who salute me," he said, "but I, who salute you!"
With those words in his ears, the dispatch-rider joined the immortal
host of the dead heroes of France.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] In strict accuracy, this particular type of gun was not in use
until the following spring.
CHAPTER VI
RETREAT! RETREAT!
There were tears in the major's eyes as he rose, and he unaffectedly
wiped them away.
"Major Fouraud, sir," said Horace eagerly, "let me take the dispatches.
The machine isn't injured a bit."
"You ride a motor-cycle also?" the major asked.
"Yes, sir. I had one in Beaufays, not this make, but one a good deal
like it."
The officer pondered.
"My battery may go into action at any minute," he said, "and there's
been no chance to send you to the rear. I certainly have not the right
to keep you with the battery. The dispatches are important. Minutes are
precious and I do not know where to find a messenger. Well, then, you
shall go."
He drew the boy aside, out of hearing.
"I will tell you the message," he said, "that, if anything happens,
you can pass on the word and the dispatch. Charleroi is in German
hands."
"So Croquier told me last night," ejaculated the boy.
"Pay attention," said the Major, curtly. "This dispatch is in reply to
a message from the Fourth Army, asking for support. The reply is that
this army will move its left wing north to join the Fifth Army, falling
back on Philippeville and presenting a united front to the armies of
Von Buelow and Würtemberg. You understand?"
"Perfectly, sir," the boy answered, biting his tongue to keep from
repeating his information concerning the German army which lay in
between.
"Off with you, then," said the major, "and good fortune!"
Horace clambered into the saddle of the motor-cycle, snatching a look
at the road map which had been found in the dispatch-rider's pocket and
started off at full speed. The cheers of his former companions of the
battery, led by the loud bellow of Croquier, reached his ears as he
rounded a turn of the road. All this had happened before the rising sun
had cleared the horizon. He waved his hand in reply.
His motor-cycle ate up the miles to Anthée and Rosée and he tore up to
Florennes with a fine burst of speed. Just before reaching the village,
the boy thought he caught a glimpse of spiked helmets at a farmhouse
window and he slackened speed for caution.
It was well that he did so.
Trotting rapidly, straight for him, was a squadron of cavalry, and, on
the slope of a hill beyond the town, Horace saw column after column of
the iron-gray infantry.
He stopped, jumped from the saddle before the wheels had ceased to
turn, and whirled the heavy machine around as though it were a racing
bicycle. Well he knew that on a narrow road, such a maneuver was far
quicker than trying to make a turn. In a second he was in the saddle
and had started off again, leaning low over the handle bars as he put
on full speed.
A volley of bullets followed him, but scattering and most of them wild,
for the cavalry had been utterly unprepared for this sudden vision of
a motor-cycle twisting around a bend of the road. No sooner, however,
did it become clear that the boy was in full flight than the Uhlans
realized he must be an enemy and started in pursuit.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_
"WE'VE GOT THEM LICKED, BOYS!"
Wounded sergeant-major being borne off the field by German prisoners,
cheering the reservists going to the front.]
If all went well, on his fast machine the boy could afford to laugh at
the speed of a galloping horse, but he had a lurking fear of the spiked
helmets he thought he had seen in the farmhouse.
Was he ambushed?
At the sound of the volley, two soldiers had run out of the farmhouse.
Seeing the motor-cycle driving straight at them and the Uhlans
galloping behind, the riflemen prepared to fire.
Lacking an officer's direction and unaccustomed to judging the speed of
an oncoming motor-cycle--that particular form of target not having been
included in the German drill-book--the soldiers waited a second too
long. Horace swerved to one side of the road as their rifles came up
and, with the speed of the wind, he was between them.
One of the soldiers put out his hand to grab the flying rider.
Horace was conscious of a sudden desire to drive straight into his foe
and scatter his brains on the road, but prudence reminded him that,
in such case, he might not be able to control his machine. Ignoring
vengeance, he shot between the soldiers like a thunderbolt and was half
a mile or more ahead when the Uhlans reached the farmhouse.
He turned off a side-road not marked on his map, and, seeing an old
peasant working in his fields, halted to secure information as to a
possible route.
"Have any Germans passed here?" he asked.
"Just before daybreak, they did," the old man answered. "Saxons, they
were. They didn't do me any harm, though. They went over the fields
that way," and he pointed to the left.
"Is there any road from here to Walcourt?" the boy asked, studying his
map, fearing that his road was cut off entirely.
"There's a foot-path," said the peasant, "but it's too narrow for that
machine of yours."
"Has any one gone that way?"
"Only some children."
"I'll tackle it," said Horace, remembering the way in which Croquier
and he had slipped through all the German armies by keeping away from
the roads. Any foot-path, however narrow and stony, was better than
encountering the Saxon advance-guard.
It was not long before he overtook the children of whom the peasant had
spoken. There were three of them, a girl about fourteen years old and
two boys of seven and five years old. They shrank into the bushes when
they heard the motor-cycle behind.
Horace stopped and asked them details of the way.
The girl was terror-stricken, but on finding out that Horace was not a
German, told him all she knew.
"You've been hurt!" the boy said, sympathetically, noticing the boys'
arms were bandaged.
The girl looked at Horace with a brooding rage and fear in her eyes.
"The Germans cut off both their right hands," she said, fiercely.
"But they're going to grow again, Marie!" exclaimed the youngest boy,
whose face was streaked with tear-stains. "You said so!"
The girl looked pleadingly at the young dispatch-rider. He read the
look aright, realizing that the girl had tried to soften the blow to
the children. So, to help lift the terrible burden of the girl and to
ease the pain of the little ones, he answered cheerfully,
"Oh, yes, they'll grow again, right enough!"
But Horace, as he rode on slowly over the faint footpath, which was
shaking his machine to pieces, laid up this cruelty as another item in
the long black count against Germany. Thousands of boys in Belgium and
in northern France have been deliberately crippled for life, so that,
when they grow old enough, they will not be able to carry arms to aid
in the revenge which the world will inflict on Germany.[15]
Walcourt, as Horace approached it, was evidently the scene of
fighting, but an orderly from a Chasseur regiment told him where to
find headquarters, and the boy whirled past, south of the village, on
another road. In spite of all his adventures, he had been only two
hours in the cycle-saddle when he reached his goal. There he had a
great deal of difficulty passing the sentries, owing to the lack of a
uniform. He was still wearing the woolen shirt that Aunt Abigail had
thrown out of the window and the bloodstained clothes in which he had
picked up little Jacques Oopsdiel, a week before. Finally he was passed
through, though on foot and under guard.
Having delivered his dispatch, he saluted, conveying a desire to speak.
"Well, sir?" the staff officer asked.
"I have other information, sir," said Horace. "It's not official, sir,
but it may possibly be of value."
"Speak, then."
"I'm pretty sure, sir, that there is a whole German Army operating
between Von Buelow's force and the Duke of Würtemberg."
The officer strode forward a step, looking critically at this lad
in civilian clothes who seemed to have so clear a knowledge of the
opposing armies.
"We have suspected it," he said. "Tell me exactly what you know."
"In detail?"
"No, briefly!"
"Last week, passing through Belgium, I saw a big army. A little later
on I found out they were Saxons. This morning I learned from a little
girl that the general in command is General Von Hausen."
"Your information," said the officer, "tallies with news brought in by
our scouts this morning. It may explain the pressure on the Charleroi
corner, which is out of all proportion to the forces we were supposed
to have against us. You have not breakfasted?"
"No, sir."
"Go and have something to eat. I will send for you later."
Horace went gladly. He had not finished eating when he was summoned
hurriedly.
"I have sent an official message to the Fourth Army," the officer said,
"but there's always a chance that the messenger may not get through.
Our lines of communication past Charleroi are demoralized. Apparently
all the wires behind us have been cut. This dispatch is important. I
should like to forward it in duplicate. Will you take it?"
"Willingly, sir," said Horace, delighted to find that he had discovered
a way to be of service.
"I have no desire to expose you to danger," he was told, "especially as
you are volunteering as a civilian, so you had better go by Beaumont
and Chimay. It is a long way round, but I think you will find the roads
clear."
"Yes, sir."
"You may state that an army estimated by our airmen as being four corps
strong is being forced in between the Fourth and Fifth Armies. Here is
the dispatch."
"Very well, sir."
"You'd better put on a French uniform."
"But I haven't the right--" Horace began.
The officer summoned an orderly.
"Have some one find a uniform for this boy," he said. Then, turning to
Horace, he added, "I'll write you an order authorizing its use, as you
are on special service."
Half an hour later a uniform was brought to Horace where he was busy
oiling his machine and filling the petrol tank.
"Where did you get it?" the boy asked curiously.
"There was a dispatch-rider shot a little distance up the road."
Horace shivered with repugnance. He did not like putting on a
dead man's clothes. However, there was no help for it, and, in
uniform--which was a little big for him--he started back for the Fourth
Army.
The ride was without special incident and the boy delivered his
message. He was expected, for the official dispatch-rider had succeeded
in getting through, though a bullet had clipped his ear. Langle de
Cary, however, had anticipated the news, and, drawing back from Dinant,
had joined with the Fifth Army, thus renewing the operative corner, to
which the reserves were being hurried.
In and around staff headquarters, the boy picked up information which
enabled him to piece together the happenings from the time he had
escaped from Liége, to this crucial Sunday morning of August 23.
Soon, quite soon, Horace was once more to come in touch with the troops
he had encountered at Beaufays, who had attacked the forts of Embourg
and Boncelles, whose shells had blinded Deschamps and whose companions
had murdered the curé and little Jacques. This was Von Kluck's army
which had marched westward, undelayed by the detachment of 40,000
picked troops to make a triumphal parade through Brussels, undelayed by
the detachment of several "frightfulness companies" deliberately chosen
and ordered to terrorize that section of Belgium between Aerschot and
Louvain.
Von Kluck, indeed, had not halted a moment. He had farther to march
than any other of the German armies, although it is true he had the
magnificent railroads and highways of Belgium to aid him in his
transport. By August 18, Von Kluck was at Tirlemont; by August 19, he
was at Wavre; by August 20, he was at Nivelles; by August 21, his left
or southern wing had halted a little northeast of Namur, his center
advancing slowly over the famous field of Quatre Bras, while his right
wing made a forced march at top speed through Enghien to Mons, the
cavalry sweeping out in the direction of Tournay. By August 22, the
straightened line, now facing south, advanced slowly in a heavy massed
formation to take up positions facing the British line and the left of
the Fifth French Army. Thus, if Von Buelow and Von Hausen should curl
up the eastern flank of the Fifth Army, Von Kluck was in position to
crush it in his iron teeth.
On this Sunday morning, August 23, the British force was still ignorant
of the fall of Namur. Sir John French had heard nothing but the distant
cannonading of the Battle of the Sambre, and when, at midnight,
Charleroi broke into flames, the British, though holding the left
wing of the whole Allied movement, were unaware of the disaster. The
disorganization caused by the sudden fall of Namur and the still more
sudden appearance of Von Hausen's mysterious army had demoralized all
communication. Spies behind the lines had cut all the telegraph and
telephone wires, and the only messenger sent to the British never
reached them, either having been killed or taken prisoner.
Although the attack on Givet, on Dinant, on Namur, on Charleroi and on
Mons are all a part of the same simultaneous battle-plan, which might
perhaps be called the Battle of Namur, history has definitely divided
it into four parts: the battle of Givet-Dinant, between the French
Fourth Army and the Duke of Würtemberg, of which Horace had seen the
first day's fighting; the defense of Namur, between the Belgians and
Von Buelow, which was merely a holocaust produced by the 42-centimeter
howitzers; the battle of Charleroi, between the French Fourth Army
and Von Buelow and Von Hausen combined, at which the one day's grace
necessary to save the whole campaign from destruction was secured by
the glorious and desperate courage of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, the
Turcos and the Zouaves; and the battle of Mons, between the British and
Von Kluck, which became a week-long retreating engagement.
The British had not reached their appointed positions on the
barge-canal until Friday, and had spent Saturday, entrenching. Sir John
French had only an army corps and a half in his command, with an extra
cavalry division covering the west wing. There was not the slightest
indication of immediate danger. Sir John French himself stated that
he was informed by his patrols, that "little more than one, or at the
most, two of the enemy's army corps, with perhaps one cavalry division,
was in front, and I was aware of no outflanking movement." As a matter
of fact, Von Kluck had five army corps opposed to the British one and
a half, and three cavalry divisions besides. The odds, therefore, were
over three to one.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
THE WAR OF FIRE.
Modern warfare has horrors heretofore unknown, with liquid fire, poison
gas, and explosive fumes. Yet after all, it is the spirit of the
soldier which counts most.]
Von Kluck's strategy was clear. He sent one corps to engage the
jointure between the French and English lines--always a weak spot
because of the division of command. He threw three army corps against
the one and a half of the British, not trying to throw them back, but
merely to keep them in action every minute of the time. With the line
thus fighting for its existence, he sent his entire fifth army corps in
a tremendous mass of motor vehicles around by Tournay and the Forest of
Raimes to crumple up the British left flank. Here was the outflanking
movement, again, beloved of German strategy and made possible by
superior numbers.
The attack on the British by Von Kluck, then, began on the morning of
Sunday, August 23, at just about the time that Horace escaped from the
Uhlans while on his way to deliver the dead dispatch-rider's message.
The battle, that morning, was wide-spread but not too heavy. Von Kluck
did not want the British to retire, for that would make his flanking
plan more difficult; he merely wanted them to hold. On the British
right, however, this need for restraint was less and the pressure was
made heavy enough to compel the withdrawal of the British from Binche.
This was for the purpose of flanking the French Fifth Army's right.
As the infantry fell back, a cavalry division was hurled after them.
The English turned suddenly and charged the German horsemen, who broke
in disorder.
"When they saw us coming," wrote Trooper S. Cargill, of the British
Army, "they turned and fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at
us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was
half wild with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through
when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes and saw that the poor chap
was dead."
So Death rode on his pale horse into the British lines that day and
became a constant companion in the awful week that was to come.
Shortly after noon, Horace was sent back to the Fifth Army with
dispatches to the effect that the Fourth Army had made the turning
movement successfully and had retired on Philippeville.
By two o'clock that afternoon, the Fifth French Army was at the point
of annihilation. Von Hausen had pierced the line at Charleroi. Von
Kluck had pierced the line at Thuin. General Lanrezac was partly
enveloped on both flanks. Knowing that the whole strategy of the
campaign was in process of swift destruction, Lanrezac did the only
thing possible. He retreated so precipitately that he was compelled to
leave behind his wounded and not a few of his guns.
When Horace came up with the dispatches, he found himself entangled in
such a confused retreat that an hour passed before he discovered some
one who could tell him to what place staff headquarters had been moved.
And, when he reached there, it had moved again. Undoubtedly some kind
of order existed, but to the boy's untrained eyes, all was confusion,
while into, over and through this confusion, Von Hausen's cavalry was
plunging.
All communication between the Fifth French Army and the British
troops was cut by the presence of Von Kluck at Thuin. Horace, who,
thanks to the veteran's teaching and the hunchback's perception of
military values, had a fair idea of the strategy of the campaign,
saw the danger that the British might be encircled and captured in
a body. Accordingly, he volunteered to try to take the news of the
fall of Charleroi to Sir John French. Owing to lack of telegraphic
communication with the General Staff, the Fifth Army Staff had no
warrant for this, but the boy was given to understand that if he took
the news on his own responsibility, he might be rendering the British
an important service. He decided to go.
Horace had planned to ride south within the circle of the forts of
Maubeuge and thence toward Sir John French's headquarters, but he was
compelled to abandon the plan. Every road to the rear was choked with
wounded, with refugees, with transport, with the inextricable disarray
of vehicles that follows a sudden change of army plans under the threat
of a disaster. Horace, fearing that every hour might see the final
smash of the weak corner between the Fourth and Fifth Armies, made all
the weaker by the pounding of the mysterious Von Hausen army which had
marched its way through the Ardennes forests unseen by airmen, rode on,
heartsick and despairing. Finding Maubeuge unreachable, he turned his
motor-cycle north with a grim determination to try and save the British
and bring them back into the fighting diamond. Clear in his mind's eyes
lay the situation. The British, the Fourth Army and the Fifth Army must
retreat slowly in order, on the fourth army--the reserves near Paris.
He ran into the zone of shell-fire. Now, the boy hardly cared. He was
beginning to find himself and the work that he really could do. What if
his heart seemed to beat as loudly as the exhaust of the motor-cycle
itself? He was going on! A few miles further, the shell-fire slackened.
This sector was less furiously attacked. Presently he shot past a farm
wagon loaded with hay.
A shout stopped him.
"You're French, aren't you?"
"Yes," answered Horace, not seeing any need for explanations.
"Well, the Germans aren't more than a mile ahead of you, thousands of
them. You'll run slap into the middle of them if you go on."
"Then they're on both sides of me."
"And all around," said the farmer, nodding his head warningly.
"Isn't there a footpath, somewhere? I've got to get to Mons."
"With dispatches?"
"Yes."
The wagoner thought for a moment.
"I'll risk it," he said. "Put your machine in the hay and hide in it
yourself."
"But if they search you?"
"They did it, only half an hour ago. They ordered me to deliver this
hay to their forage depot, beyond Thuin, and said they'd cut my throat
if I didn't. And I like my throat better than my hay. But I'm going to
try and make them pay for it, just the same!"
"Then you ought to be able to pass," said the boy, with a quick hope.
"Like that! And why not you, too? They won't take the trouble to search
twice."
It was the work of only two minutes to lift up the motor-cycle and
hide it in the hay. The boy concealed himself also, leaving only the
smallest breathing-space.
The farm-wagon rolled into Thuin, the farmer showing the German order
that he had received and clamoring for pay. The only response was a
threat to cut off his thumbs if he failed to deliver the hay before
nightfall. He drove on sulkily.
Near Marchienne, where a small road branched off to the west, the
farmer stopped and helped Horace to take down the machine.
"Good luck!" he said quietly and drove on, grumbling, as he went, about
the price of his hay.
It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and Horace sped forward,
finding, to his discomfiture, that the little road was tending
northward towards Bray. The roar of the battle, muffled at first as he
drove through the coal-pit region, grew louder and louder. The woodland
country ceased, and in place of fields and trees the landscape became
one of shafts, chimneys and piles of débris on which grew a few stunted
pines, a landscape which fitted well with the hideous ugliness of war.
The motor-cycle throbbed on and presently Horace ran into the lines of
an infantry regiment, not dressed in the blue jackets and red trousers
of the French[16] nor in the iron-gray of the German, but in the khaki
of the English.
"Where's your commander?" he asked, in English, forestalling suspicion.
"Over 'ere!" said a Tommy. "What 'ave you got in yer bonnet?"
"Dispatches," the boy answered, "for headquarters."
He was taken to the ranking officer, a tall man with a quiet, impassive
voice and a cold manner.
"Your name?" he asked.
Horace gave it.
"Credentials?"
"I haven't any," said Horace, and he explained the situation.
"I will have the matter duly investigated," the major replied.
"But I want to tell it to Sir John French!" persisted the boy.
The Englishman would not even disturb himself sufficiently to look
surprised at the lad's presumption.
"The matter will pass through regular channels," he replied. "I cannot
allow you to proceed farther along the British lines. You will remain
here, under guard."
"You mean I'm a prisoner!" Horace exploded.
"You will remain here, under guard," the captain repeated, without the
slightest variance of inflection in his tone.
"But I'm an American!"
"The matter will be duly investigated."
Horace grew red with anger, and boy-like and untrained in military
discipline he burst out,
"Well, if you all get cut up by Germans, it won't be my fault. You've
got Von Kluck on your left, Von Buelow on your right and Von Hausen
behind. If you stay here, they'll make mincemeat of you."
"We will endeavor to avoid that fate," said the Englishman, stiffly,
and motioned for the lad to be led away.
Horace fairly danced with temper.
The Londoner, who had listened to the boy's outburst, grinned broadly
as soon as they had left the place.
"You've got cheek, you 'ave," he said, "talkin' to an officer like
that."
"He!" exploded Horace, "he's made of wood, head and all!"
"Go slow," said the Tommy, "'e's a proper bit of all right, 'e is,
don't you make no mistake. That's 'is way. 'E's just the same under
fire, never turns a 'air. 'E was drawlin' 'is orders this mornin' like
'e was on parade. An' it was a tight corner, too."
"Were you attacked this morning?" Horace asked, with sudden interest.
"We fair were! I was through the Boer War, an' the 'ottest fight we 'ad
in that was frost-bitten aside o' this mornin'."
"I'm not surprised," the boy retorted. "I could have told that human
icicle with the eye-glass--if he'd had the sense to listen--that there
are five corps facing your two. Besides, they've reserves ready to jump
you any minute."
The Tommy looked at him curiously.
"Not now they won't," he said.
"Why not?"
"They're in a blue funk."
"You mean--scared?"
The soldier nodded mysteriously.
"They'll be driven on, scare or no!" declared the boy. "What did you do
to scare them all?"
"Nothin'."
"Then, what?"
"They've got the trembles."
Horace saw that there was something behind the Tommy's evident
reluctance to speak, but, little by little, he won him round.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The War Illustrated."_
SAVED IN A HAIL OF SHELL.
British drummer who dashed into the zone of fire to save a wounded
officer. When hit himself, he fell, but hooking his feet under the
officer's arms, propelled himself by his elbows backwards into safety.]
"There's queer things 'appen in war!" he remarked.
"Very queer," agreed Horace, thinking of Mme. Maubin's prophecy and
remembering some of the tales he had heard the French gunners tell.
"Mark what I'm sayin'--if it wasn't for some o' them queer things, I
wouldn't be 'ere talkin' to you."
"You saw something?" queried Horace, jumping to a conclusion.
"I saw it? We all saw it. First there was a sort o' yellow mist, sort
o' risin' out o' the ground before the Huns as they came to the top
of the 'ill, came on like a solid wall, they did--springin' out o'
the earth, just solid; no end o' them. I just gave up. It's no use
our fightin' the 'ole German race in one day, thinks I. It's all up
with us. The next minute, up comes a funny cloud o' light, an' when it
clears off--this is gospel truth, I'm tellin'--there's a tall man, with
yellow 'air, in gold armor, on a white 'orse, 'oldin' 'is sword up an'
'is mouth open. Then, before you could say 'knife,' the 'Uns 'ad turned
an' we was after them, fightin' like ninety."[17]
He stopped, in a shamefaced silence.
"That's queer," said Horace, "I've heard a lot of yarns just like
that with the French Army. Only yesterday I was talking with a French
cavalryman. He was one of the squad of men sent out by his colonel
to find out who were the cavalry acting as rearguard to the retreat.
He saw the cavalry, himself. But when he got there, nothing could be
seen. Yet that invisible cavalry was keeping the Germans back, just the
same."[18]
"We took a prisoner, this mornin'," corroborated the Tommy, "'oo said
'e 'ad seen 'is bullets strike the air an' drop as if there 'ad been a
wall there. We 'ad the Fiend on our side, 'e said."
"And I saw a Boche," the boy replied, "one of the Death's Head Hussars,
who claimed that we hypnotized their horses by magic so that they
couldn't run."
"There's queer things 'appen in war!" the Tommy said, musingly.
The talk passed on to other battle omens and Horace told the story of
the "captive Kaiser." He was recounting Mme. Maubin's prophecy when an
order came requiring him to go before the English captain.
"A telegraphic dispatch has been received," said the officer,
"confirming your information. You are at liberty."
Horace waited, expecting some apology for the detention, but none was
forthcoming. Evidently the English officer felt that he had acted
exactly according to military regulations.
"What was the dispatch, sir?" the boy asked.
"I was not instructed to announce it," the Englishman replied.
The tone nettled Horace, for he had been trusted by the French officers.
"Thank you, sir!" he said with an irony which was entirely lost on the
captain.
There was nothing more to be said and Horace returned to the Tommy.
Before he could regain possession of his motor-cycle, however, he
was compelled to waste two hours more in the red tape of official
procedure, and this, too, while the battle was actually raging a mile
away.
This dispatch received from General Joffre was, indeed, sufficiently
grave. Received at exactly five o'clock that Sunday evening, it
disclosed that, against the 75,000 men of the British force, Von Kluck
was hurling 220,000 men. Of these, 150,000 were engaged in a frontal
attack, 50,000 men were flanking him to the left and 20,000 cavalry
were on his left rear. In addition to that, 100,000 men under Von
Buelow threatened his right and Von Hausen's cavalry were closing in
on his right rear. A fighting retreat, with a succession of rearguard
actions to cover the retiring battalions, was the only tactic possible.
Much has been said in blame of the French staff for the "unaccountable
delay" in notifying the British. There was delay, but it was neither
unaccountable nor so great as it seemed. It was not until that very
Sunday morning that Von Hausen pushed forward in advance of Von
Buelow and forced the retreat of the Fifth Army. Even with perfect
coördination--a thing rarely possible in a disordered retreat--the
French General Staff would not know the situation until midway of
the morning, and, even then, could not know the size and scope of
Von Hausen's army. Then, too, the wires had been cut. There was,
undoubtedly, a delay of five or six hours in notifying the British, but
not more.
That Sunday night was spent in clearing the roads to the rear of all
heavy transport. Sir John French knew that absolute mobility was the
only condition of a fighting retreat. He knew, now, his desperate
situation, and he knew, too, the crucial nature of his position. The
fate of France now hung on the stiffness of his retiring line. For
this, however, he had the most marvelous troops in the world for such a
purpose, the British regulars. His original position being slightly to
the northward of the Fifth French Army, he was more than a day behind
in commencing the retreat. He was fighting an army three times as large
as his own. He was being attacked on the flank as well as in the rear,
yet he was the sole barrier that France possessed against the piercing
of its strategic diamond at "third base."
All night the German artillery continued a steady shelling, with
intermittent bursts of rifle-fire, as though threatening an advance.
The British outposts, firing largely from loopholes in the walls of
factories, gave the Germans no hint that the line was preparing to
retire.
At four o'clock the entire British force stood to arms and the retreat
began. Horace's aversion, the cold and correct captain, led his men in
a desperate attack from Harmignies on Binche, and the lad was compelled
to admire the officer's inflexible courage and splendid handling of
his men. It was true, as the Tommy had said, that the officer was as
imperturbable under fire as at his headquarters and he was utterly
regardless of personal danger.
Gallant as was the leader, the determination of the troops was no
whit less wonderful. There was less dash than among the French, but
the dogged strength and power were superb. No matter how thin the
line, the Germans could not break through. One battalion stayed at the
covering point until only five men remained. It was on this day that a
lieutenant, taking up a position in a building which had but one door,
and that facing the enemy, when told by his non-commissioned officer
that there was no way out, replied:
"There is no need for a way out. We have to stay here for six hours!"
There was no place for Horace with the British, and at sunrise he was
on his motor-cycle on his way back to his friends in the Fourth French
Army, for he saw that the driving force of the battle was not at any
one point, but along the whole line, and he felt he could be of more
use where he was already known. The retreat, as he passed through it,
was vastly more orderly and methodical than the retreat of the French
after Givet and Dinant, but, at the same time, its slow and methodical
methods resulted in a heavy loss of life.
The German jaws bit and tore at the English troops. They hurled
brigades of men against companies and engulfed them. But they could not
break the line.
The German artillery, advancing, deluged the lines with bullet and
shell; the British artillery, retreating, necessarily limbered up
much of the time for the retreat, could not reply adequately. One
hundred shells to one were hurled at what had been called by the Kaiser
"Britain's contemptible little army." But they could not break the line.
Clouds of cavalry swept upon the flank, picking off the English by
ones and twos, by dozens and by hundreds. They sacrificed themselves
valiantly in an attempt to force their way through that khaki-clad
resistance. But they could not break the line.
Morning, noon and night, dusk, midnight and dawn, Von Kluck drove
the attack, leaving scant time for food, less time for rest and
practically no time for sleep, seeking to wear down human resistance
by sheer exhaustion and fatigue. But he could not break the line.
Horace found the same terrific pressure on the Fourth Army, forced back
by Von Hausen and the Duke of Würtemberg. He had feared to find a rout,
remembering the breaking condition in which he had left the army, but
he found it reformed, reënforced, strong as ever and filled with a grim
determination to save Paris at all costs. The men of his old battery
greeted him with a shout.
"Where have you been?" they cried. "Tell us the news."
Horace told all that he knew, or rather, all that he thought he ought
to tell, describing the desperate though resistant condition of the
British expeditionary force.
"But they're retreating, too," said a gun-layer, gloomily, "always
retreating. Are we going to give those dogs of Boches all of France?"
So it seemed as day after day passed by.
Back, back, and ever back.
Retreat amid the wounded, retreat in hopeless rear-guard actions with
dead on every side, retreat on roads crowded with homeless and hopeless
refugees fleeing anywhere away from the advancing horror of war,
retreat without food, retreat without sleep, retreat in rain, in mud,
in blazing heat, in choking thirst, retreat under the reproachful eyes
of deserted women, retreat under the stinging shame of defeat, retreat
until the heart was as weary as the feet and death would be a boon.
Retreat over a front of 200 miles, with every road, every street, every
lane, every by-path surging with misery, crowded with panic.
France, their France, trodden under the heel of the invader!
To see and hear of nothing but ruin and ravage! To be unable to help!
To be afraid to advance! To march until the soul cries for peace and
the body aches for rest, though neither can be satisfied!
Horrible is the battle, but more horrible by far is the dispiriting
agony of the retreat. For twelve long days France saw the flower of
her manhood vanquished and thrown back. She saw her armies despondent
and dejected. She saw her territory given over to spoliation and
destruction.
"Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!"
Almost the heart of France was breaking.
Yet she saw, too, her generals and officers, with grim-set lips
and watchful eyes, who knew the mighty strength that lay behind the
apparent weakness, in whose minds lurked menace and thrust in the word
"Retreat!"
She saw, too, the line traced by a broad thumb across a big scale map
as her Commander-in-Chief outlined the Valley of the Marne.
"Retreat!" he said.
Ever and again his generals questioned him, but received only the word.
"Retreat!"
Until, one day, he placed that same broad thumb upon the map.
"There!" he said. "There, they shall not pass!"
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Vance Thompson, writing from the front, Sept. 13, 1914, said of
this: "Some day the story of what was done in Alsace will be written,
and the stories of Visé and Aerschot and Onsmael and Louvain will seem
pale and negligible; but not now--five generations to come will whisper
them in the Vosges."
[16] The horizon-blue uniforms of the French Army were not ready until
the year 1915.
[17] Red Cross report. Private of the Lancashire Fusilier Regiment
after the battle of Vitry le François.
[18] Official report. Lieut. Col. of Hussars, after battle of Le Cateau.
CHAPTER VII
WHERE DESTINY SAID "HALT!"
"The bugler of Destiny has sounded 'Halt!'"
In these words, the hunchback summarized the news of the defeat of the
Germans at _Le Grand Couronne de Nancy_ (Hill-Crest of Nancy), the
defeat which duped the German High Command and nullified their plans
for the supreme effort on Paris.
It was evening, the evening of September 4. Horace and his fellow
fugitive, safely arrived in Paris, were sitting at the window of a tiny
room, looking at the night sky, across which the cones of searchlights
wandered.
The tightening of the French lines, the reëstablishment of regular
communications and military discipline had combined to relegate both
Croquier and Horace from the front, though they had begged to be
allowed to stay. They had been in Paris for over a week, now, the
hunchback having offered his tremendous strength for heavy work in a
munitions factory.
The "captive Kaiser" never left Croquier's sight. He took it to the
factory in the morning and carried it back at night. He slept with the
steel chain of the cage fastened to his wrist. In the quarter where
they lived, the hunchback had already become a familiar figure, and
boys tramped up the stairs in the evening with rats and mice for the
eagle's dinner. Under the agile pens of newspaper paragraphists, the
story of the "captive Kaiser" had brought merriment and superstitious
hope to hearts heavy with listening for the tramp of the ever-nearing
German feet.
Paris was silent but courageous. Fear brooded heavily over the city,
but the terrible tales of individual suffering never robbed the French
capital of a simple heroism and a fine devotion that were worthy of its
best traditions. The removal of the government to Bordeaux, two days
before, had shown the people how narrow was the margin of safety by
which Paris rested untaken. They accepted the dictum of their military
leaders that it was a measure to allow greater freedom in handling the
armies for the great action about to begin.
"Has the spring tightened at last?" asked Horace, remembering the
veteran's prophecy that the strategic diamond would be pressed back to
the reserves, and that then the counter-attack would come.
"Tightened to its last spiral," answered Croquier. "It must rebound
now, or smash. And the Germans have got a blow right between the eyes,
at Nancy!"
Horace pressed him for details. The boy was eating his heart out
from inaction. He had sent a cablegram to his father, according to
his promise to Aunt Abigail, but he did not go to see the American
minister, feeling sure that he would be sent back to America. He did
not want to go. While he had taken his fill of battle, not for worlds
would he have left Paris without seeing, as he phrased it, "the end of
the war."
Under Croquier's guidance, the boy had followed every official
bulletin and news dispatch with avid and intense excitement. His field
experience and the veteran's lessons on strategy, when with the guns
back of Givet, had given him an insight which enabled him to piece the
scraps of information together. He was thus able to grasp the real
significance of the victory at Nancy.
The defense of Le Grand Couronne was of tenfold more importance than it
seemed at the time, for it formed the starting-point of the greatest
battle of modern times, known as "The Battles of the Marne," the series
of victories which saved France. Croquier, who knew that part of the
country thoroughly, was able to give Horace an exact picture of that
first great success on the hills south of Verdun.
"They've done well, the Germans," the hunchback began, "but if they're
going to try to keep up this drive of theirs, they'll soon find
themselves in a pickle for the lack of that chief need of a modern
army--a short, strong Line of Communication. You remember how the forts
of Liége tied up everything, even after the city was taken?"
Horace nodded vigorously. He was not likely to forget Liége.
"Already, the Germans are beginning to get into difficulties. Maubeuge
is holding out, controlling the railway there, so all their supplies
are coming by Belgium. It's a long way, and wastes a lot of men to hold
it. There is, though, a good railway line from Metz, which is six times
as short as the line they're using. But to take that, they've got to
take Toul, and to take Toul, they've got to take Nancy, and to take
Nancy, they've got to take Le Grand Couronne."
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The War of the Nations."_
ATTACK ON A STRANDED TANK.
The Germans bombed it, fired through loopholes, tried to break its
mechanism, but failed. Finally the tank grunted and moved away.]
"But why just exactly there," asked Horace, "if the position is so
strong?"
"It isn't, it's the weakest point," the hunchback answered. "As you
know, the French-German frontier is the most strongly fortified line
in the world. The forts are in four groups, Belfort and Epinal to
the south, Toul and Verdun to the north. Belfort and Epinal are in
difficult, mountainous country, further away from Paris and less
valuable for railway purposes. It would be bad strategy, too, to break
through at the southern fort and leave the northern forts unreduced,
for it would cut the attacking army in two and give the northern forts
a chance to snip the Line of Communication. Verdun is enormously
strong. That leaves nothing but an assault on the sector of Toul.
"Now," continued the hunchback, "you've got to understand the
Alsace-Lorraine campaign. On August 10, while the forts of Liége were
still holding out and Leman was peppering Von Emmich, we invaded
Germany. We had nothing but victories for nine days. It was too easy.
On August 20 one of our air scouts came back with the news that there
was a huge German army gathering at Metz. On August 21, five army corps
were hurled on our flank. We were surprised, partly surrounded and
crumpled up. The Boches got thousands of prisoners and scores of guns
and Field Marshal Von Heeringen drove us clear back out of Germany. On
August 25, the Crown Prince of Bavaria drove us back from before Nancy,
and the German Crown Prince finally burst into France through Longwy.
That was the beginning and the end of our Vosges campaign."
As the hunchback pointed out, however, while this campaign was of
little military value, it had a vast political and strategic value.
It mistakenly convinced the German High Command that France had
concentrated the larger part of her armies on the frontier in the
hope of retaking Alsace-Lorraine. This made more difficult, but also
rendered more important, a victory at Toul.
Le Grand Couronne is a series of little hills, not more than 600 feet
high at any point, lying north and a little east of Nancy. It was no
use to take the city unless the heights were captured. If, however, the
Germans took Le Grand Couronne, the French must evacuate Nancy and the
invaders could then bring their heavy siege guns into place to demolish
Toul.
"A Boche skull is thick," Croquier went on, "and even the slaughter of
Liége didn't teach them the waste of life in sending masses of troops
against artillery. They hadn't any idea, either, of the powers of our
'Soixante-Quinze.' For a week they did nothing but pile up hills of the
iron-gray dead on the slopes leading up from the River Seille. They'll
never take it now."
There Croquier was right. On that evening of September 4, where the
two were sitting, chatting, in the little attic room, Von Heeringen
knew that further attack was hopeless. Two days later, however, the
Kaiser was seen in person on the hills overlooking the battle, in
white uniform and silver helmet, waiting for his triumphal entry into
Nancy--which never happened.
It was this decisive and unexpected defeat which convinced the Germans
that the French were in great strength at this point and which caused
them to send their heaviest reënforcements on the eastern end of the
attacking line, instead of reënforcing Von Kluck and Von Buelow who
were nearest to Paris.
"It's the same old combination which smashed us at Charleroi, then,"
said Horace, "which threatens Paris."
"Yes," the hunchback agreed, "and, what's more, it's the same old
clash between German and French strategy. The diamond, now, has been
squashed nearly flat, but you can see the formation, still."
"How?" asked Horace, "it looks like a straight line to me."
"It isn't, though," Croquier answered. "I'll show you. Paris, instead
of being 'home base' is now 'third base' and the Verdun to Belfort
line is 'first base.' Then the Fourth and Fifth French armies are the
operative corner or 'third base,' while the great armies of reserve,
under General Foch, swinging into line on the south, are 'home base.'
The military point of Paris, as 'third base' is the new Sixth Army as
organized under General Manoury."
"Well, then," said Horace, "if the battlefield works out according to
French ideas, we ought to win by the rebound given by Foch's army."
"A few days will show," said the hunchback. "I only wish that I could
help in the actual fighting. But, I suppose, I'm just as useful making
shells as firing them."
"One minute," said Horace, as they were about to separate for the
night, "where are the British?"
"The Expeditionary Force is tucked away between Paris and the
Fifth Army, with more than two thirds of its men lost. However,
reënforcements are pouring over from England."
Early next morning, before Horace was awake, Croquier left the house
to pick up the first news of the day. When he returned to the frugal
breakfast the lad had prepared, however, he had very little information.
"All that I can find out," he said, "is that the Sixth Army, under
Manoury, is wheeling up to Von Kluck's west flank."
"I don't seem to know much about the Sixth Army," said Horace. "Who are
in it?"
The hunchback gave the details of the divisions as far as they were
known.
"That's a mighty weak army," commented the boy.
"It is," the hunchback agreed, "but it's only supposed to be a covering
army, so far as I can make out. It can fall back on the defenses of
Paris."
"But couldn't Von Kluck surround Paris, then?"
The hunchback shook his head.
"Impossible," he said. "Von Kluck would have to stretch his line out
on a circle ninety miles long--for that's the circumference of the
advance trenches beyond the outer fortifications of the city--and to do
that would make his line so thin that it could be broken like the paper
in a circus-rider's hoop.
"I think," he continued, "mark you, I don't know, that Manoury's army
is intended to do the same thing that Le Grand Couronne did--to make
the Germans think our line is strongest at the two ends, when, in
reality, it is strongest in the middle."
"Is Joffre doing that so as to weaken the German opposition to our
rebound?"
"It looks like it," Croquier admitted, "but that sort of thing is hard
to find out until weeks, sometimes months, afterward. A generalissimo
never lets his plans be known. To-night's news may give some clew. Now,
I'm off."
As soon as Croquier had started for the factory, Horace set out to put
into effect a resolution to which he had come during a wakeful night.
He was not going to sit at home idle when Paris was in danger!
It was still a little early, so Horace strolled out into the streets.
He was living in the northern quarter of the city, and the markets
were choked with the vast stores of supplies being hurried in for use
in the event of a siege. Enormous herds of cattle were being driven
into Paris to graze on the waste spaces kept free of buildings, not to
interfere with the fire of the inner forts.
A steady stream of people had their faces turned to the southwest,
women and children escaping from the threat of war, trekking for
distant points of safety, with their goods piled into the bullock
carts of the peasant, the pony carriages of the rich, or even in
wheelbarrows. In almost every group there were tiny children and
babies. It was for their sakes that the flight was made.
Where were the men?
None were to be seen save those who labored mightily with the supplies
being brought in a steady stream into the city.
Where were the men?
Out on the fortifications, digging trenches, putting up barbed wire
entanglements or dynamiting houses in the suburbs which would interfere
with the line of fire.
There may have been a man in Paris that Saturday morning who was
engaged in his own affairs instead of those of his country. There may
have been--but Horace did not see one.
It was not too early now, the boy thought, to carry out his plan. He
returned to the house, wheeled out his motor-cycle which he had cleaned
and oiled and put in perfect shape during his days of inaction, and
whizzed up to the headquarters of General Gallieni, Military Commandant
of Paris, and in supreme control now that the government had moved to
Bordeaux.
"Volunteering as a dispatch-rider, sir!" said the boy to the first
staff officer before whom he was brought. He showed the paper "on
special service" which had been given him at the time he had donned the
dead man's uniform, which he was still wearing.
At headquarters there was no English red tape or delay.
"Good," said the officer, "we can use you." He went into an inner room
and returned a moment later. "Take this!" he said, and gave Horace
directions and orders.
The boy shot off through the streets of Paris, thronged with refugees.
Signs of the French high-spiritedness were not lacking. On one store
window was written:
"Closed until after my visit to Berlin!"
Another, a watchmaker's, referring to the difference in time between
France and Germany, had a sign which read:
"Gone to put German watches right!"
The streets leading to the railway stations were thronged, but, as
he reached the outskirts of the houses, the streets were empty. The
Sorbonne glowered upon streets of empty shops. The workmen were on
the battlefield, the schools were closed, many of them turned into
hospitals.
Here was a gate, with a real control of traffic, but small show of
armament.
"Dispatches from General Gallieni!"
"Pass!"
Out through the gate to the green belt which cried aloud in strident
tones the transition from peace to war.
Here were the men of Paris!
The aged ragpicker worked with pick and shovel beside the wealthy
exquisite, as irreproachably dressed in the ditch as in his luxurious
home, necessarily so, for he had no old clothes to wear. The literary
scholar had risen from his books to tear his hands in stretching barbed
wire with the keeper of a dive for his companion. The consumptive
carpenter had brought his tools, the still vigorous blacksmith, too
old for military service, had loaded anvil, forge-frame and coal on a
wagon and was sharpening pickaxe heads.
Here, too, were the women of Paris.
Frenchwomen of noble birth worked in extemporized kitchens beside the
peasant mothers of the outer suburbs and the midinettes of Montmartre
to feed this new-sprung army of workers.
One thing Horace saw, and saw that clearly--Germany might take Paris,
but as long as one Frenchman or one Frenchwoman was left alive, the
Germans would not take France. The boy dimly felt that France was not a
territory, it was a soul.
He delivered his dispatch and waited.
A dirty, unshaved, mud-bespattered figure digging near by, spoke to him
with a cultured voice and a gay laugh.
"It is nothing, my little one," he said to Horace, "what if they come?
We shall bite their heads off. Those boches are going to put themselves
in a _guetapens_, a veritable death-trap. We shall have them at last!"
It was the same gallant French spirit which had been demonstrated a few
days before by Colonel Doury. When ordered to resist to the last gasp,
he said to the dragoon who brought the order,
"Very well, we will resist."
Then, turning to his soldiers, he said,
"We are to resist. And now, my boys, here is the password--'Smile!'"
It was the same gallant French spirit found in a soldier who, when
reënforcements reached him and asked whether a certain regiment was not
supposed to hold the village, answered,
"It holds the village!" and pointed to his lone machine-gun. He was the
only survivor.
It was the same gallant French spirit seen in the little drummer, who,
when his hand and drum were shot away, sang "Rat-tat-a-tat!" at the top
of his throat to the advancing troops until his throat was still for
ever.
Horace had seen the wonder of war in the field. Here he saw it in the
defense of Paris and felt anew the depth of the hunchback's saying that
victory lies in the spirit of men, not in its machinery. He remembered
the master's saying that the strength of a country is in proportion as
its women are strong.
In the defense of Paris, the boy felt that he had his place. However
irregular might be his position as a dispatch-rider, especially at the
front where military discipline prevailed, he was invaluable in the
voluntary work of aiding to strengthen Gallieni's defenses. Moreover,
he learned indirectly some of the tactics planned for that very
afternoon.
Le Grand Couronne had shown that the Germans could not break through at
Nancy. The German line, therefore, could not drive bodily forward to
the southwest, as apparently had been intended. It became necessary for
the invading armies to concentrate further to the east.
Von Kluck's army had been facing southwest, to attack Paris. On
receiving news of the repulse at Le Grand Couronne, he was compelled to
pivot his line on the Marne, so that it faced southeast. This maneuver,
reported by the French air-men, revealed that the German plan had
changed. They dared not try to take Paris.
Nothing remained but to endeavor to engulf the French armies. The
Germans deemed this impossible in the east, because of the supposed
heavy concentration of French troops there, because of the strength
of Verdun and because of the defeat at Nancy. The flanking movement,
therefore, must be made in the west. This could only be done by
driving a wedge down between Paris and the Fifth French Army, heavily
reënforced and now under the command of General d'Esperey. This gap was
held by the British, against whom the Germans had a special hate.
Von Kluck and Von Buelow had not reached their advanced positions
easily. They had been severely mauled in two defeats, at Le Cateau
and at Guise. In a war of less magnitude, these would have appeared
as great Allied victories, but Joffre preferred to lose the advantage
of following up these victories for the greater advantage of falling
back strategically in good order. Moreover, the forts of Maubeuge still
held. It was not until the grim old warrior Von Zwehl, with superhuman
energy, brought up the great siege-guns, that Maubeuge fell. It was
then too late for the guns to be of any service in the Battle of the
Marne.
That Saturday afternoon, learning from air scouts that Von Kluck had
massed his forces to the south, in order to attack the British on the
morrow and pierce the gap, Manoury determined to force the issue. He
launched his small and war-wearied army against the reserve which Von
Kluck had left behind to guard the crossing of the Ourcq. The western
end of the Battles of the Marne had begun.
Two important results developed immediately. One was Manoury's
discomfiting discovery that the German heavy artillery gave the
invaders a tremendous advantage when great mobility was not needed, as,
for example, in defense of the crossings of a stream. The other was
Von Kluck's discomfiting discovery that Manoury's army, attacking his
reserves, was far stronger in fighting power than he thought. Each of
these surprises counterbalanced the other.
This same Saturday afternoon, moreover, at the time that Manoury
attacked, Von Kluck, from the other wing of his army, had sent a
scouting party of cavalry to find out the location of the British Army.
It was an excellent opportunity to cut them up, but the British Field
Marshal had drawn his troops into cover of the forests and he let the
scouts go by. A courier, detached from time to time, took to Von Kluck
the welcome news that the British were nowhere to be seen and that
the hoped-for gap existed. The British chuckled with glee. Von Kluck,
surer every moment of flanking the Fifth French Army, hurried his men
southward.
Suddenly, however, that Saturday evening, Von Kluck received word of
the Manoury attack and realized that his reserves were threatened
and his own flank was in danger. His men had marched all day. A large
section of his army had to march back all night to reënforce the
reserves attacked by Manoury.
Horace, through his experience on the battle front, had learned that
a motor-cyclist's greatest usefulness is at dawn or a little before.
This is due to that fact that, when an army is on the move, telegraph
cable is laid from division to brigade headquarters and from brigade
to battalion headquarters, as soon as these positions are determined
for the night. This is done from cable wagons and the Signal Corps men
are so deft that the cable can be laid as fast as horses can canter.
At about three o'clock in the morning, if headquarters are going to
move, this cable is picked up, ready for use the coming night. Enemy
assaults, however, are likely to begin at dawn and these may cause a
change in the dispositions already decided on. It is then that the
motor-cyclist dispatch-rider is especially valuable.
At three o'clock this morning of Sunday, September 6, Horace got up,
put on the dead man's uniform, trundled out his motor-cycle and whizzed
to General Gallieni's headquarters.
The place was buzzing with activity and Horace realized that grave news
must have come in on the military telegraph wires. He was hailed at
once.
"You're just what we've been looking for!"
A list of addresses was handed him.
"These are the names of taxicab companies and garages who haven't
answered their 'phones; probably shut up at night. Find some one, any
one, every one! Rout them out and tell them to rush every cab and car
they've got to those section points."
"What for?" asked Horace, already in the saddle, and moving off.
"Troop movements. Hurry!"
Through the still, night-enshrouded streets of Paris, the boy sped.
It was a dangerous ride. Round every corner and shooting along
every street, taxis and motors were speeding, driven by half-awake
chauffeurs. All night long, troops had reached Paris by train. They
were needed at Meaux, forty miles from Paris, where Manoury was
attacking. If they marched, they could hardly reach the battle that
day and would be too wearied to fight. But forty miles, to a fleet of
motor-cars, was different.
By five o'clock that Sunday morning, four thousand taxis,
motor-busses and motor-cars were speeding from Paris to Meaux. Men
rode on the front, on the back and hung on to the springs. Twelve and
fourteen men piled into and on a taxicab. The motor-busses carried
sixty and seventy, men hanging on by the straps of their rifles, jammed
into window frames. They looked like insects on a plant. Inside they
were packed like herrings in a cask. But they roared with delight at
taking a taxi to the front. By noon, Manoury's army had been reënforced
by 70,000 troops. The army was, however, lamentably weak in artillery,
for field guns cannot be loaded into taxicabs!
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Panorama de la Guerre."_
THE MEN WHOM NO DANGER CAN DAUNT.
The voice of the High Command is in the hands of the Signal Corps:
broken telephone and telegraph wires must be repaired in spite of shot
and shell.]
Von Kluck was destined to get another surprise this Sunday morning.
Despite the report of his Uhlans that the British were nowhere to be
seen, the astute general had placed two bodies of cavalry, about 18,000
men in all, as a precaution against a flank attack when he withdrew
his men northward to meet the surprisingly strong shock of Manoury.
The unsuspecting cavalry were awaiting orders to pursue either the
Fifth or Sixth French armies, whichever one Von Kluck should decide
to smash. They were dismounted and resting, when suddenly the western
woods belched flame. The British had not fired a shot until sure of
the exact range. Shrapnel poured like the blast from a furnace, men and
horses fell dead in inextricable confusion. The German cavalry had no
time or means to reply, and, timed to the second, the English cavalry
swept down and turned the scene to a rout.
In the north, despite Von Kluck's reënforcements, Manoury's army fought
with great courage, at several places forcing the Germans back. But
they could not cross the Ourcq against the heavy artillery.
That same Sunday, Foch, in charge of the great line of reserves
officially called the Ninth French Army,[19] did not attempt an
advance, but rather, deliberately, allowed his line to sag. This was
intended as a lure to lead the Germans on, in the hope that Manoury
would be able to flank Von Kluck. But, on Sunday night, Manoury found
that Von Kluck had brought back nearly all his army, and that he was
being outflanked, in his turn.
On Monday, reënforcements came to both sides, but more heavily to Von
Kluck, who was supported by heavy masses of artillery. Manoury, lacking
artillery support, held his ground, and even advanced slightly, but
Von Kluck moved further on his flank. On Tuesday the Sixth Army was
driven back, but fighting heavily, with all its reserves in action, Von
Kluck devoting only a part of his army to the frontal attack, while
one whole army corps commenced to encircle the flank. On Wednesday the
disaster was almost complete. Even as late as that day Von Kluck had
been able to throw in more men, released two days before by the fall of
Maubeuge. Nanteuil had been taken and the army was flanked. Manoury's
army was almost horseshoe shaped, with Von Kluck gathering it in as a
bag is clutched by its drawstring.
What would the morrow bring?
The morrow brought blank astonishment.
The morrow, Thursday, September 10, saw Nanteuil abandoned by the
Germans and Von Kluck in full retreat.
What had happened?
Foch had happened!
"Find out the weak point of your enemy," Foch had said once, when
talking of strategy, "and deliver your blow there."
"But suppose," he was asked, "that the enemy has no weak point."
"Then make one!"
Joffre had made the weak point and Foch had delivered the blow. It
was not without knowledge of his marvelous tactical ability that the
generalissimo had selected Foch for the army of reserves, for the great
rebound.
In order that Foch might deliver the blow, it was necessary that
Manoury should risk annihilation. Why? That, as Horace saw long
afterward, was a part of the great strategical plan of the French High
Command under Joffre.
The four-day engagement between Manoury and Von Kluck had drained the
power of the Sixth French Army to its last gasp, but--it had taken
the whole force of Von Kluck's right wing to do it. The British were
advancing steadily (though so slowly that it imperiled the whole plan)
on Von Kluck's left wing. Manoury and the British, then, like two
leeches, were sucking Von Kluck's forces westward, at a time when the
German line was driving southeastward.
The Fifth Army, under General d'Esperey (who had taken Lanrezac's place
when the army was reënforced) was a powerful force, containing six full
army corps, three of them fresh reserves. The Germans, believing it to
be the same army they had routed at Charleroi, esteemed it lightly.
But on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, it steadily drove Von Buelow back,
crossing the Marne and holding the bridgeheads. In this it was helped
by the British heavy artillery, an arm in which the French army was
weakest. At the same time, d'Esperey's pressure enabled the British
advance. There was magnificent fighting here, for Von Buelow was in
strength with a full equipment of artillery.
The Ninth Army, under General Foch, had suffered heavily. Two German
armies opposed it: four army corps under Von Hausen, who was flushed
with victory and pursuit, and the independent command of the Prussian
Guard, consisting of one entire army corps. Foch had three army corps,
nearly all fresh troops, but he would not use them all. Von Hausen and
the Prussian Guard attacked savagely and heavily. Foch allowed his line
to sag, purposely, to thin the German line, but on Monday he was driven
back, and on Tuesday, the German drive was so vicious and powerful,
that Foch's right wing was forced back for ten miles.
On Wednesday, then, the same day that Von Kluck was encircling Manoury,
Von Hausen had all but pierced the French line at Foch's right wing.
A bad gap had been formed because Langle de Cary, on the left wing of
the Fourth Army, had held firm. There was almost a hole, therefore, ten
miles wide, running slantwise behind Langle de Cary's left rear.
The Battle of the Marne is the most important victory of modern times.
It saved France. In a measure it saved the world. As the victory
hangs on a curious battle formation which developed that afternoon of
Wednesday, September 9, its main features may be repeated. It is well
to see how the various armies stood at midday of this decisive day.
At midday, Von Kluck was encircling Manoury, having drawn his right
wing far to the north and west to do so. His left wing was in momentary
danger of attack from the British, who had crossed the Marne. This wing
was being driven north.
At midday, Von Buelow was being pushed northwards by the hammer blows
of d'Esperey, whose army was fighting in fine fettle, aided by the
British heavy artillery. This army was strong enough to lend a corps to
help Foch to sustain the central German push. Von Buelow, then, also
was being pushed north.
At midday, Foch's left wing, stiffened by the extra army corps, was
holding the right wing of the Prussian Guard, but his right wing had
been thrust ten miles out of the line by Von Hausen's drive. Von Hausen
was therefore exerting every pound of force he owned to break through
Foch's right wing, in other words, he was driving southeastward.
At midday, then, Von Buelow and Von Kluck, going northward and
westward, were being dragged away from the Prussian Guard and Von
Hausen, being dragged southward and eastward.
This thinned the German line, and it thinned it at a very dangerous
point, just where the edge of the plateau of Champagne drops suddenly
to the marshes of St. Gond.
Possibly Von Hausen was aware of this, but if so, it is evident that he
thought that the piercing of Foch's line was only a matter of hours. In
any case, Von Hausen was as certain of piercing the line next day as
Von Kluck was certain of swallowing Manoury the next day.
At midday, Foch ordered the 42nd Division, one of the crack corps of
the French Army, to fall back and rest. The order was thought to be a
blunder and the men fumed, for, they thought, they were holding the
Germans triumphantly. All through that sultry afternoon, while the
skies grew blacker and blacker and the thunder rumbled in the distance,
the 42nd Division waited with piled arms, hearing the sound of battle
only two miles away. And all through that afternoon, Von Hausen
summoned his reserves from behind the Prussian Guard, gathered every
man he could get to hurl them into the gradually opening gap.
To the German Commander, the French feet were slipping, slipping,
slipping on the brink of disaster and defeat.
At exactly four o'clock in the afternoon, when Foch's right wing was
holding back the German fury of assault by sheer valor, the 42nd
Division, rested and eager, received its long-awaited orders. It was
bidden advance through the pine woods and burst upon the Prussian
Guards, now forming a thin exposed flank to Van Hausen's army. At five
o'clock, an order ran all along the whole line for a sudden stiffening
and a French counter-offensive.
At a few minutes after five o'clock, the pine-woods suddenly became as
great green fountains of living warriors. For a moment the shouts of
advancing hosts silenced the terrific roar of the artillery. Unnumbered
batteries of the ever-potent and death-dealing "Soixante-Quinze" came
galloping. As an avalanche sweeps away saplings, so was the Prussian
Guard swept away. There was scarcely a pause as the armies joined. The
French went through with a thunderbolt's strength and vindictive power.
The wild thrill of victory ran along the line. The gap widened, broke
and shattered. The shouting lines went through.
Into the hole the Ninth Corps leaped, smashing and shivering the
eastern corps of the Guards. All semblance of battle formation was
lost, and the Guards were cut to pieces. There were no reserves behind.
The German line was broken, smashed, shattered irretrievably!
The Saxon offensive, under Von Hausen, still hoping to break through
before night fell, learned of the peril. Every moment spelt danger. The
French were sweeping in behind them. Langle de Cary was in position to
cut off their other flank. The German Drive, to which forty-five years
of military preparation had been given, weakened, halted, wavered and
went to pieces.
Now, into the battle Foch threw his reserves. Victory was in their
hands! A million men could not have stopped Foch's army now. Into the
bewildered German ranks plunged the French, each man a giant with the
intoxication of victory, each man a living vengeance for the atrocities
inflicted on France and Belgium. Death was on Von Hausen's heels and
that too close for an ordered retreat.
The German feet were slipping, slipping on the brink of disaster and
defeat.
Von Hausen fled.
The storm held off long enough to make the smash complete and then the
rain fell in torrents. Woe for the heavy artillery now! Its very power
which made it so dangerous, made it immobile, and the roads, rapidly
turning to sticky mud, forbade its passage. There was light enough for
slaughter, and the 75's, mobile and easy to handle, chased the Saxons,
unlimbered, mowed down the fleeing invaders, limbered up again, chased
forward, unlimbered and fired again. There were few wasted shells that
night! Thousands of prisoners were taken, hundreds of guns captured,
vast stores of ammunition seized.
Von Hausen had far to go. He had to get back, back, back into contact
with the German line or he would be wiped out absolutely. Von Buelow
had been driven far north by d'Esperey, Langle de Cary had stubbornly
held the Duke of Würtemberg. Von Hausen had far to go, and the French,
fevered with success, would not stop. Hour after hour through that
pouring night, the dripping trees saw a slaughter grim and great.
Not until nearly morning did the pursuers halt, and that night Foch
established his headquarters in La Fère Champenoise, twenty-five miles
in advance of his headquarters of the night before.
France was saved!
The Battles of the Marne were won!
With the conclusion of the Battle of the Marne, Horace found his
occupation gone. A victorious army is not in need of volunteer
dispatch-riders, even though they may be partly accredited. This the
boy felt himself to be by reason of having the right to wear a French
uniform under special conditions and by having been entrusted with
dispatches.
None the less, Horace was convinced that he could pass the sentries,
at least, and he could follow behind the advance. He would at least
be seeing the war for himself, and, if he were successful in making
his way to the rear of his old army, the Fourth, he might be given
something to do. Anything was better than idling his time away in
Paris, and Croquier, working over-time, was never home except to sleep.
On Sunday, September 13, just one week from the day when Gallieni
had sent his fleet of taxicabs to reënforce Manoury at Meaux, Horace
started forth once more on his motor-cycle. The sentries at the gate
knew him and he passed by with a cheery word of greeting. The uniform
of the dispatch-rider passed him by many sentries, but one, either more
careful or more curious than the rest, stopped him.
"Dispatch-rider formerly with the Fourth Army, temporarily attached
to the army defending Paris, returning to my own command," the boy
answered. The facts were true enough, though the implication was a
little forced. He thanked his stars that the sentry did not ask for
his identification disk, which, of course, he did not possess. Inquiry
might have caused him to be suspected of being a spy.
Out through the suburbs of the city, Horace rode at slow pace, enjoying
the fair weather after the rain. Beyond the suburbs he passed through
little villages, as yet untouched by war. Then, as he trended farther
north and east, he suddenly entered a region still panting with horror
and dismay.
This was Horace's first sight of a battleground that had been swept
by two armies. The retreat he had witnessed from Givet, was a retreat
from an advance-guard shock, and while the roads had been covered with
débris and flocked with refugees, it had shown little of the signs of
actual warfare. In his participation in the retreat from Mons, he had
seen a fighting retreat. The ground between the Marne and the Aisne was
not like either of these. It was a battle-swept desolation.
A land of terrible contrasts! Gardens filled with a riot of color,
where, here and there as it chanced, the flower-beds had not been
trampled down, while in the middle stared the ruined walls and eye-less
orbits of a shell-rent house. The trees were scarred with shell, the
roads littered with broken boughs. Here and there, in the fields on
either side, shallow trenches had been scraped. Hay stacks and straw
stacks had been torn down for cover.
Near and far lay stiffened figures in the German iron gray, and, in
some places, whole groups of them, yet unburied. Furrows all along the
roadside marked fresh graves. At one place, evidently, a corps of
bicyclists had been caught by a sudden storm of shell and decimated,
the twisted and broken bicycle frames having been dragged into the
ditch, so as not to interfere with traffic.
At one place, Horace had a fearful fright.
Running through a wood at low speed, he came out on a small open
stretch of garden. In one corner, near a shattered pile of brick, was a
half-overturned but still recognizable grand piano, and crouched half
behind and half on it, the sun throwing his iron-gray uniform in strong
contrast to the red wood and the light glinting on his rifle-barrel,
was a German soldier, a sniper.
It was too late to turn.
The boy jumped the cycle to high-speed, thinking thus to dodge the aim.
As he skimmed by, he cast a backward look at the soldier.
He had not moved.
The gray uniform still lay crouched behind and across the piano, and
the hands still rigidly held the rifle, but there were no eyes in the
sockets of the dead man. They had been pecked out by the crows.
Many fields in France will be haunted by ghosts when the war is over.
The road was greasy and covered with débris, requiring slow riding. It
was not wise to look too closely at the piles along the way.
Overhead the September sun shone brightly, here and there a clump of
wild-flowers which had escaped destruction waved in the wind, the
arching trees were green, for, over this battlefield mainly shrapnel
and rifle-fire had been used and no high-explosive shell with looping
trajectory had stripped the branches. On through the beech-forest to
the desolation beyond and Horace, looking down, saw the road a mere
tangle of beams, stones and scrap-iron. He got off, to lead his wheel,
and saw, under his foot--a paving stone.
This, then, was a street!
Yes, bit by bit, he could see the outlines of a tiny village. It could
not have held more than a dozen houses, but not a wall, not a fence was
standing. Here the Germans must have made a stand and the ground was
leveled flat for their pains. Over a horrid pile, a trellis-work of
roses had fallen. It made the boy think of the gardener's reply to a
recruiting sergeant, when he joined the colors:
"The only plants that France is interested in growing now are--laurels."
Few villages were as wholly devastated as this, though in many of them
the houses were piles of brick and plaster, with walls standing here
and there. Everywhere were graves, bearing thin wooden crosses, with
the soldier's kepi or a few faded flowers hanging on them. A village of
formerly a hundred houses had but one left habitable. Like most of the
places in the march of the retreating army, it had been deliberately
set on fire for revenge.
A sudden whistle made the boy duck his head.
A bullet?
No, a blackbird singing.
"In spite of all, he knows it is French soil again!" said Horace, half
aloud, and laughed at his own thought.
On through a little town where, two nights before, a squadron of
Chasseurs d'Afrique and a regiment of Zouaves in motor-cars and taxis
had surprised the Germans at dead of night and where--never mind
why!--the captured German officer had been quietly but expeditiously
shot. On through a farm-yard, marked by a shell-hole in which some
ducks were dabbling. Swift must have been the pursuit that did not
linger to seize them for the cooking-pot!
On through an almost deserted country, with scarcely any people to be
seen save little groups here and there. All these groups were engaged
in the same occupation--digging graves. It was one of these aged
villagers, who, when a German officer asked him why he troubled to dig
graves instead of burning the bodies, answered fiercely.
"From every French soldier's grave, ten soldiers will grow!"
Gutted houses, torn and charred hayricks, scraps of clothing, broken
motor-cars, scraps of shells, and fires where the bodies of scores of
horses were being burned, marked the line of the storm of war.
Ah! There is a farmhouse standing, almost untouched. The road to it is
covered with shell-splinters. There are white figures there.
Turned into a hospital, of course, with doctors, orderlies and--nurses.
So soon! So near the battlefield! Later, when the war was systematized,
the nurses were not found in such advanced positions, but at this
crisis for France, the red cross on the sleeve was but little less
eager to plunge into its work than the arm that thrust the bayonet.
Are the Germans returning? They do not know.
Will that farmhouse be shelled in the next half-hour? They cannot tell.
Nor do they greatly care. For they know that they, too, are saving
France.
Horace throbbed on, his thoughts vibrating to the tune of his
motor-cycle, and, as he thought of the Red Cross of the Battlefield,
the master's voice rang again in his ears,
"A nation's strength is in proportion as its women are strong."
Here, too, lies the Wonder of War, more, a thousand times more, than
in any invention of a larger gun, a more deadly shell, or a more
abominable method for taking life.
Now the lad found himself approaching the battling armies.
Chateau-Thierry, abandoned by the Germans only two days before, had
already become a supply depot for the right wing of Manoury's army,
for Manoury had taken advantage of Von Kluck's defeat to cross the
River Aisne and was holding the whole northern side of the river,
from Compiegne to Soissons. While lunching in the little town, Horace
learned of the magnificent attack which had established Manoury on the
northern side of the river, ready to assault the heights the next day.
His eastward journey took him to the south of the British Army. The
memory of the "human icicle" still lingered, and though Horace knew
that he would not find all the English officers of the same stripe,
yet he kept away, passing south of Epernay. He learned, however,
that though Manoury had crossed, Sir John French had not, and the
German heavy artillery forbade any attempt to force the Conde bridge.
The British were, in fact, at the most impregnable point of that
impregnable barrier, the ridge above the Aisne.
Still the boy pushed on, his course now being south of the Fifth Army,
under d'Esperey. This army had also crossed the Aisne, but had not been
able to establish a firm footing on the other side, and its position
was precarious. The long afternoon had shown sights as desolate and in
some cases more horrible than those he had seen in the morning and he
was glad to find a little village where he might sleep, wearied and
heartsick with the sights of the day.
"The only thing more sad than a great victory," Wellington said once,
"is a great defeat."
Though Horace was some little distance from the front, the cannonading
that night was heavier and more sonorous than any he had heard before.
There was a good reason. General Von Zwehl, one of the grimmest
warriors in all the German Army, had brought the great siege-guns up
the heights overlooking the Aisne, after four nights and three days of
continuous marching. The thirteen traction-engines couldn't move the
guns, for there had been wet weather, and General Von Zwehl had tailed
the infantry on with long ropes. Like the slaves of Egypt who hauled
blocks of stone for the pyramids, the German soldiers slaved under
blows, curses, and threats of death. During the last twenty-four hours
of this march, the 18,000 troops and the guns covered 41 miles. Human
nature rebelled and red mutiny showed its head for a second, but Von
Zwehl had a nature as hard as the steel of his guns. Every murmurer was
shot dead in his tracks. The guns crawled on.
All night long, searchlight bombs were thrown. All night long, angry
streams of flame flickered like serpents' tongues on the sky and the
jagged gash of explosions lit up the black smoke of burning buildings
or the white puff-clouds of hungry shrapnel.
Von Zwehl knew what was going forward. He knew that it was the night
set for the crossing of the Aisne. He knew that no matter what might be
the fury of flame and bursting chemicals that poured down on the banks
of that river, engineers would be laboring to construct bridges and
bodies of troops would be trying to cross. The searchlights, like eyes
white with hate, peered here and there, the discovery of a crossing
party being a prelude to a tornado of lead which opened the gate of
death, a gate which swings, alas! too easily on its hinges in war time.
On Monday Horace passed south of Rheims, not dreaming, as no one in
the world dreamed, that it was to be shelled two days later, and that
its shelling would be deliberate. That there might and there would
be cruelty, butchery, massacre, that, of course, he knew, but that
absolute and reckless vandalism should also be ordered, neither his nor
any civilized mind would have expected. No one, save a Teuton, ever
dreamed that deliberate destruction of one of the world's marvels would
be sanctioned, permitted, even deliberately determined, and that for
petty revenge, spite and foiled rage. The German point of view was put
by Major-General Von Ditfurth:
"It is of no consequence," he wrote, "if all the monuments ever
created, all the pictures ever painted, and all the buildings ever
erected by the great architects of the world were destroyed, if, by
their destruction, we promote Germany's victory over her enemies.
The commonest, ugliest stone placed to mark the burial place of a
German grenadier, is a more glorious and perfect monument than all the
cathedrals in Europe put together."
If it be asked why Rheims was bombarded, the answer must be given in
the terms of the Battle of the Aisne, the essential details of which,
however, are simple.
The main factor in the Aisne battlefield is contained in this sentence:
"Strategists have said that from the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic
Ocean there is no natural line so strong as the line occupied by the
Germans."
When to this natural strength was added the skill of Field Marshal von
Heeringen, sent to assume the duties of a generalissimo over Von Kluck
and Von Buelow (Von Hausen being disgraced and relegated to the rear),
the iron craft of General Von Zwehl, the extraordinary concentration
of artillery and the vast ammunition supplies, it can be seen why
the Allies were never able that winter to take the heights overlooking
the Aisne. For, from Rethel to Compiegne, are bluffs 450 feet high
overlooking the river with natural spurs jutting out from point to
point to enfilade the stream. Every place of crossing is defended by
a natural spur, and every spur mounted a terrific array of artillery.
Every road on the north bank was in German hands, every road on the
south bank was an easy and direct mark for artillery.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
THE ENDLESS LINE OF MOTOR CONVOYS.
Gasoline is king of that vast stretch of endless energy behind the
battle front. Movement of troops, munitions and provisions depend on
the unceasing operation of tens of thousands of trucks.]
As Horace found out that day, when his course took him south of Foch's
triumphant army, the Battle of the Aisne was governed by the old rule
of war which declares that the army which chooses the battleground has
an advantage of almost two to one. The French had chosen the Valley of
the Marne, the Germans chose the ridges commanding the Aisne.
Yet there was a great deal more than that involved. It would be gravely
unjust to German strategy to suppose that they had not considered the
possible results of a failure in their plan of attack. The German
General Staff was fully prepared with its defensive line in case Paris
did not fall. The sapping and mining corps, the engineer corps, did not
join in the advance on the Marne. For a week they had been working
with indomitable energy on the Aisne to prepare what proved to be an
invulnerable natural fortress, strong as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Months before the war began, Germany had not only laid out a basis of
battle on a favorable terrain, but she had also laid out in detail the
manner in which a defensive position was to be taken up, should this
prove necessary. She knew that if she failed at Paris, the loss of
life would have been fearful. The German system of fighting in massed
formations ensured that. It would, therefore, be all the more necessary
that the defense should be made with machinery. If the heights were to
be taken, let flesh and blood do it. The Germans had been slaughtered
in attacking Liége. Let the Allies be slaughtered in attacking the
Aisne. Every foot of land had been mapped and studied, the heaviest
artillery in the world was available, and the ammunition supply system
was in full operation. Let them come!
Germany had prepared a marvelous attack which was within an ace of
success and was prevented from the accomplishment of its final and
full aim only by three things, each, in its way, a glory to one of the
Allied Nations: the valor of the defense of the Belgians at Liége; the
dogged courage of the British in the fighting retreat from Mons; and
the superb dash of the French when they shattered the German line at
the Marne. All three were needed to save France.
The battle of the Aisne consisted simply of the efforts of the English
and French to gain those forbidding and strongly protected heights. Von
Kluck, given all the men and artillery he needed, drove back Manoury
in the space of a few hours. The British crossed by a superb frontal
attack, which ranks as one of the bravest deeds in modern warfare, and
were wiped out. D'Esperey crossed the Aisne east of Bourg, only to find
that the Craonne plateau was unassailable. By Friday, September 18,
Joffre was compelled to realize that the bluffs above the Aisne had
been turned into an impregnable open-air fortress, not to be stormed by
flesh and blood.
For Germany one thing was lacking, a strong Line of Communication.
The main railroad to Coblentz, with a branch to Metz, passed through
Rheims. If Germany were to have the vast supplies she needed, she
must take Rheims or content herself with the weeks of delay which the
Belgian route required. Rheims was imperative.
But Foch held Rheims!
The keenest strategist of them all, with no natural defenses save two
small hills at Pouillion and Verzenay, the great French general had
made his line of defense so strong that it had become practically
unassailable. Especially it bristled with battery upon battery of
"Soixante-Quinze" guns. For four successive nights, waves of men, such
as those which were hurled at Liége, drove against Foch, striving by
weight of numbers to break through.
It was in vain. The disposition of Foch's troops was deadly. The
positions had been chosen by the best strategist in Europe, who had
anticipated this very attack, knowing the importance of Rheims to the
Germans. There was not a foot of ground that was not covered as with a
web by the shrapnel and melinite shells. Only twice did those terrific
attacks break through the "Soixante-Quinze" zone into machine-gun fire
range and there they fell in heaps.
By the night of September 19, Field Marshal von Heeringen was compelled
to realize that Foch's position could not be taken save by the use
of heavy artillery. This could not be brought into position without
exposing itself to destructive fire before he would have a chance to
fire a shot. Battle was impossible. Savage revenge remained.
On Sunday morning, the German artillerists redoubled their fire on the
Cathedral--to France her most sacred building, where all her kings
had been crowned and to which Joan of Arc led the Dauphin, and to the
art-lovers of the world, a work of transcendent beauty.
The cathedral was not being used as an observation station, as the
Germans alleged. It was being used as a hospital for the German wounded
and two large Red Cross flags were flying from it. A shell struck the
scaffolding which had been erected for restoring the left tower. The
scaffolding flamed, and the fire spread to the old arched roof of oak
below the roof of stone. The molten lead from the gutters fell on the
straw within, where the wounded Germans were lying. The interior became
a mass of flames, threatening to burn the wounded men alive.
Swift to the rescue sprang the gray-haired Archbishop Landreux. The
aged prelate, together with a young priest, rushed into the flaming
fane. Within, the straw was ablaze, overhead the timbers were
crackling, glistening drops of molten metal menaced them every few
yards and shells were dropping steadily. The frail archbishop lent
his feeble strength to those who were able to stagger, and Abbé Chinot
bodily picked up the wounded and carried them out.
A revulsion of mob fury seized the people. They saw their Cathedral in
flames, they saw the shells deliberately aimed for it, they saw their
inoffensive dead in the bombarded streets and they saw a just vengeance
in allowing the German wounded to burn alive in the pyre of their own
making. The mob, hoarse with rage and growing wilder every minute,
raised its rifles to fire at the wounded men who had been carried out.
The gray-haired archbishop, a Prince of Men as well as a Prince of the
Church, stepped quietly between them.
"Very well, my children," he said, "but you will fire on me first."
The demon-shriek of the shells continued, the drumming of gunfire
continued, but in the crowd there was silence. Then, with that sudden
response to greatness which lies hid in the hearts of all men, the
crowd leaped forward as one man to save the wounded men for whom, a
moment before, they had been clamoring to see burned alive.
And, through the whole scene, the statue of Joan of Arc looked on at
the brave act of a prelate she would have delighted to honor and the
recognition of courage by the people she herself gave her own life to
save.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] By order of numbering, this was the 7th Army. Just why it was
officially designated the 9th is still unknown.
CHAPTER VIII
DIGGING IN
A winter compounded of rain and fire had settled down heavily over the
Aisne Valley and the plain of Champagne, from Rheims to Verdun. The
chalky soil oozed gray and--red.
Deadlocked, their grip at each other's throats, German and Frenchman
watched each other across a narrow, noisome waste, now and forever
to become the symbol of all that is most horrible, most deadly, most
pitiable:
No Man's Land!
Tens of thousands of men waited for the word of command which should
bid them expose themselves to the unsated appetite of hungry slaughter,
tens of thousands of men waited inactive while death and mutilation
chose them, one by one.
A gray soil, a gray sky, and a gray doom.
The only thing that moved was the shuddering skin of the earth as the
bullets flayed it in streaks or the shells dug deep holes like the
festering sores of a foul disease. Not a blade of grass, not a weed,
not a shrub remained; where leafy woods once had been, now only a few
scarred and slivered stumps pointed accusing fingers upward. It was
Chaos come again.
Where were the shouting hosts charged with valor, such as those who had
driven forward at La Fère Champenoise, when Foch's army saved France?
Gone!
Where were the gallant fights to save the guns, when men met in open
combat under the open sky?
Gone!
Where were the cavalry charges when squadrons with saber or with lance
clashed in a deadly but glorious shock?
Gone!
Where were the armies that had fought hand to hand in the streets of
Charleroi; that had snatched at and escaped from death alternately in
the great retreat; that had hurled themselves at each other with equal
fury in the attack or the defense of Paris; that had charged up the
slopes of Le Grand Couronne and the bluffs of the Aisne with equal
gallantry, and, dying, still had shaken their fists in the face of
Slaughter?
Gone, all gone!
Aye, gone indeed, but where?
Dug in!
Horace, off duty for a few hours from his post as military telephonist,
for which he had fitted himself to qualify when his work as a motor
cyclist was done, looked at the smitten world. He tried to compare the
war before him with the war to which for one brief, wild month he had
been so close. There was no comparison.
To nothing that the world has ever seen could the War of the Trenches
be compared.
It was a cold, invisible inferno, which, every morning and evening,
spewed up its ghastly tale of dead and wounded; which, every evening
and morning, yielded up its line of staggering, weary, war-dulled
figures, glad to exchange the peril of death for the miserable
existence which was all that was possible behind the trenches in the
plain of Champagne that first fearful winter.
The war of men was over, only a war of murderous moles remained.
In a rickety hovel behind the lines, which, as Horace's companion in
the telephone work declared, was "weather-proof only when there wasn't
any weather to put it to the proof," the boy had puzzled over this
new warfare. At last, one day, the opportunity serving, he hunted up
his friend the veteran--now a sergeant-major--and learned the causes
and the methods of the ditch-born strife.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Le Miroir."_
THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD.
Bombardment of shrapnel and high explosive shell, forming a barrage
fire through which the men seen in the trench are about to plunge.]
"Modern fighting," said the veteran, as he cleaned his rifle, a daily
task in that rust-devouring atmosphere, "is the result of modern
weapons. Whereas a musket would take two minutes to load and had a
range of only a couple of hundred yards, a modern rifle will fire
thirty shots a minute and over, and has a good killing range at an
almost flat trajectory of a thousand yards. Suppose it takes a charging
force of infantry six minutes to run a thousand yards, where a musket
would get in three shots a modern rifle would put in from 180 to 300
shots, and would be firing almost continuously."
"Men would have to be under cover to face that fire," agreed Horace.
"More murderous than the rifle," the veteran continued, "is the
machine-gun, which fires 600 shots a minute and can be operated by two
men. It is estimated as being equal to fifty men, but, in reality, its
destructiveness in the hands of a good gunner is far higher. It's easy
to handle, too, the Maxims weighing sixty pounds and our Hotchkiss
fifty-three pounds, because the English weapon is water-cooled and ours
is air-cooled."
"Which is best?"
"Ours," replied the veteran promptly, "because a Maxim, when it's
firing steadily, gets so hot that it boils the water and the enemy can
see the steam. Then he knows where you are and concentrates his fire
and--you tuck in your toes and no one will ever wake you up."
"Invisibility counts," said the boy.
"It's the difference between life and death!" was the reply. "That's
where the value of the trenches becomes evident. Since both rifles and
machine-guns have a flat trajectory, when they do strike the ground,
they do it at a very slight angle. If your head is ten inches below the
level of the ground, a thousand men can fire at you with rifles and
machine-guns a hundred yards away, and you can smoke a pipe comfortably
and listen to the song of the bullets overhead.
"Shrapnel, especially when handled by the 'Soixante-Quinze,' which, in
addition to being the best field-gun in the world, has the best shell
with the best time-fuse, is more destructive against advancing troops
than machine-gun and rifle-fire combined, when it is rightly timed.
Of course, it is far harder to aim exactly and to time to the second.
A shrapnel shell holds 300 bullets and a 'Soixante-Quinze' can fire
fifteen shells a minute. That means that one gun can send 4500 bullets
a minute into an advancing enemy, the bullets scattering in a fan shape
from the burst of the shell. The Boches, by the way, waste a tremendous
amount of ammunition in bursting their shrapnel too high. I got hit,
myself, with three balls from a shell which had burst too far away and
they didn't even make a hole in my trousers; bruised me a bit, that was
all.
"But you can see, my boy, when you've got rifle fire, machine-gun fire
and shrapnel all looking for a different place to put a hole through
you, a trench is the loveliest thing in the world, no matter if it's
wet and slimy, full of smells and black with dried blood. The worst
pool of filth would be a haven of refuge if only you could drop your
body in it a few inches below the zone of certain death. If one gets
caught once in the open, one never grumbles again about the labor of
digging a trench."
"But why are trenches so twisty?" asked Horace. "One misty day, when it
was safe, an aviator took me up a little way, and I had a chance to
look down on our trenches. I was only in the air a few minutes and we
didn't go very high, but, although I know this section pretty well, I
couldn't make head or tail out of our lines. They looked like a sort of
scrawly writing, or a spider's web stretched out and tangled up."
"That's not a bad description," said the veteran thoughtfully, "they
do look a little like that, with the communication trenches for the
cross-threads. But there are a good many reasons why the trenches are
made 'twisty' as you call it.
"In the first place, a trench is made zigzag, so that, if the enemy
should make a sudden raid and seize a section of the trench, he can't
fire along it and enfilade you. Then a trench that wavers in long
uneven lines is much safer against shell-fire, for, supposing that the
enemy does get the range of a piece of trench, his range will be wrong
for the same trench ten yards farther on, the shells falling harmlessly
in the ground before it or behind it.
"Besides that, a thin wavy line is much more difficult to see from an
aëroplane than a straight line, because there are no straight lines in
nature. That's why we've had to stop putting straw in the trenches,
the line of yellow was too easy to see from overhead."
"Is that why trenches are made so narrow?" the boy asked. "I've often
thought it silly to make them so that two people can hardly squeeze
past each other. The stretcher-bearers growl about it all the time."
"The ideal fire-trench," the veteran answered, "should be only about
eighteen inches wide and not quite four feet deep, the upthrown earth
forming a parapet. It should be recessed here and there, and traversed.
To pass a man, you have to slide sideways. The communicating trench
should be about fifteen yards to the rear. It should be seven feet deep
and about three feet wide.
"Twenty-five yards in the rear is the cover trench, sixteen feet
deep, and wide enough to allow troops to march in single file. The
communication trenches from one line to another are always best as
tunnels, though sometimes they are open. Our trenches here are open,
but," the veteran nodded sagely, "I don't think they ought to be. This
is a chalk soil, and the whitish soil underneath shows too clearly when
you throw it up."
"The trenches wouldn't be so bad," said the lad, "if they weren't
always wet."
"You can't change that," the veteran responded grimly, "unless you can
find some way to make water run up-hill. It stands to reason that if
you dig holes in the ground and it rains--as it does nearly all the
time in this wretched northern country--the water is going to run into
those holes. If you bale it out by day, the Boches see you, and if you
pump at night, they hear you. If it rains, the trenches are going to be
knee-deep in water and you can't help it."
"But how can you find your way, when one trench looks exactly like
another and they're all twisting and turning like so many snakes trying
to get warm?"
"You can't, unless you know the plans," the sergeant-major answered.
"You've no idea of the amount of work that our draughtsmen have to
do, in mapping out these underground cities and thousands of miles of
ditch-streets. I know my little section, of course, and each officer
has learned the tangle of trenches in which his command is likely
to operate. But the officers have to know the tangle of the enemy's
trenches, too, and, what's more, when we attack, they have to be in the
front and guide us. An assault isn't just a blind drive over the top,
it must have a definite goal and has to be reached a certain way. The
officers have got to know the Boche roads as well as our own."
"But how can they find that out?"
"Aeroplanes with photographers and draughtsmen," came the reply.
"You've heard the story of the tattooed draughtsman?"
"No," answered Horace, "I haven't."
"He was a young fellow," the veteran began, "who was assigned to the
job of making a plan of the enemy's trenches opposite his part of the
line. The Boche lines were on a little higher ground than ours at that
point, so that nothing could be seen from the fire trench. The young
draughtsman went up in a machine several times, but there was a very
efficient battery of anti-aircraft guns a little back of their lines
and the Archies would not let our Farman aëroplane come down low enough
for a photograph to show anything definite.
"This chap got desperate. He was bound to succeed, no matter what
happened to him. At last, one night, we caught a Boche patrol on No
Man's Land and wiped them out. As soon as the return fire slackened,
the draughtsman, who had been in one of the dug-outs, crawled out,
and, wriggling flat to where the Boches had fallen, he grabbed one of
the dead men by the ankle and dragged him to our trench.
"Then, unobtrusively and to our open-mouthed astonishment, the young
draughtsman dressed himself in the dead man's uniform, read carefully
all the papers in the pockets, so that he might learn who it was he was
counterfeiting and bade us good-bye.
"'There's just about one chance in a million,' he said, 'that I don't
get found out right away. If I am, then--' He clicked his tongue like a
trigger. 'If I'm not caught and can manage to go back with the relief
and return again,' he said, 'as soon as I get to the trench I'll bolt
out of it, holding my left arm stretched out straight. You'll know by
that, it's me. They'll pot me from behind, of course, but I may get
half-way over No Man's Land before they do. If I drop, just smother the
place where I fell with bullets so that the Boches don't have a chance
to sneak out and get me.'
"'But that'll cut you to ribbons,' I said to him.
"He shrugged his shoulders.
"'I'll be dead, probably,' he said, 'and if I'm not and you kill me,
then it's only five minutes' difference, anyway.
"'Then, when it's night, let some of the fellows go out and drag me in.
I've got an indelible pencil, and you'll find a map of the trenches on
my chest.'"
"Did he go?"
"He did," the veteran answered. "We watched close all that night, all
the next day and all the next night, till we were sure that he had been
nabbed.
"Then, suddenly, one of our chaps called,
"'Here he comes!'
"Sure enough, just as it was getting light enough to see, a figure
dressed like a Boche came jumping out of the trench holding his left
arm stretched out straight and began a bolt across No Man's Land. He
was running like a hare, but three or four rifles spoke. He dropped,
wounded, and began to crawl, inch by inch, to our lines. Then they got
a machine-gun full on him and began to spray him with bullets, like you
sprinkle a flower-bed in summer.
"He didn't wriggle very far.
"We answered them hot and heavy. We didn't leave room for a worm to
crawl up to him, much less a man. Then, when night came, some of our
fellows drove a sap to where he lay and hooked down the body."
"And the map?"
"Scrawled on his bare chest, the way he said it would be," the veteran
answered, "and underneath was written in the same smeared violet marks
the word:
"'Victory!'"
"You can't beat France when it comes to heroism!" declared Horace.
"The English are just as nervy," answered the veteran. "Even in the
trenches, though, they fight differently. They make far fewer night
attacks than we do, and far more mines. There's few nights that the
British haven't got a listening patrol out somewhere on the line."
"I hear every one talking of a 'listening patrol,'" put in the lad;
"tell me, Sergeant, just what a listening patrol is for."
"To listen," answered the veteran laconically.
"Of course, but for what?"
The answer came, sinister,
"Mines!"
"Ah!" Horace had seen the effects of those most terrible of all weapons
of trench warfare.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
LISTENING PATROL TRAPPED BY A STAR-SHELL.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
LOCATING ENEMY SAPPERS ON A LISTENING PATROL.]
"You see," the veteran explained, "when trenches are well and solidly
dug, especially the way the Germans build them; when solid machine-gun
emplacements are made and properly manned with plenty of ammunition;
when there is a concentration of artillery to support the trenches on
both sides, nobody can do much. Of course, they shell us all the time,
and we shell them. They send over rifle-bombs and we shoot ammonal and
vitriol grenades. Once in a while, if they're lucky, they'll land a
'Minnenwerfer' in one of our trenches and then there's a little work
for the doctor and a lot for the grave-digger."
"What's a 'Minnenwerfer'?"
"A pleasant little toy the Germans have invented, which looks like
a rubber ball at the end of a stick. Its right name is the 'Krupp
trench howitzer.' It weighs only 120 pounds--at least one of them that
we captured, weighed that--and can be handled by a couple of men.
Although it has a caliber of only 2.1-inch it throws a shell of 16-inch
diameter."
"How on earth can it do that?" asked the boy. "You can't squeeze a
16-inch shell down a 2.1-inch muzzle!"
"That's what the stick is for," came the reply. "The shell is round,
like one of the old-fashioned cannon-balls you see piled up in village
squares beside antiquated cannon. It weighs 200 pounds and has a
bursting charge of 86 pounds of tri-nitro-toluol. The shell is bored to
the center. You shove one end of the iron rod into the gun so that it
sticks out about eight inches beyond the muzzle. Then you put the shell
on the rod by the hole bored to the center. It looks like a toy balloon
at the end of a child's toy cannon. Then you fire it, the iron rod is
shot out, driving the bomb ahead of it and off she goes."
"Will it go far?"
"Far enough," the veteran said. "At an angle of projection of 45
degrees with the low muzzle velocity of 200 feet per second, the range
of the bomb is 1244 feet and it takes eight seconds to come. That's the
only good thing about it, sometimes you can hear it coming soon enough
to dodge into a dug-out. But neither Minnenwerfers, nor the 5.6-inch
nor even the 8.4-inch howitzers will win a trench. It takes mines to do
that.
"So, in order to gain an advantage, one side or the other burrows
deep tunnels in the earth, sometimes 16 feet down, sometimes 60, all
depending on the soil and the plan. The men work underground like
moles and they drive a long subterranean gallery until they come right
below an important point, maybe an officers' dug-out or a grenade
depot. Then they burrow upwards a bit, and put in a tremendous charge
of explosive, melinite or something like that, and fix an electric
wire. The earth is then rammed back into the gallery, an electric
contact is made and whiz! bang! about forty tons of mixed heads, legs,
bits of bomb-proof and earth go flying into the air, leaving a hole big
enough to build a bungalow in and never see the roof.
"Then it's our turn. While the section of the Boche line is in
confusion we dash across, while our artillery, behind us, smothers the
rest of the line. We settle in the big hole and build our trenches from
it and we've gained a hundred yards and can pepper the Boche trenches
from their rear. A mine's a great thing, although, sometimes, it costs
more men to consolidate and hold a place like that than to take it.
The British have beaten us all at that game. They've got small armies
of Welsh miners, doing nothing but that all day and all night long.
They're used to it, it's their trade and they don't mind.
"Now, a listening patrol, which is what I began to tell you about,
is a patrol generally consisting of four men, under an officer, which
creeps out on No Man's Land during the night. By approaching near the
enemy trenches, listening with their ears to the ground, the men can
hear if there is any one at work under them. The earth--as you ought to
know, being a telephonist--is a good conductor of sound, and if there's
any tricky business going on, a listening patrol can find it out."
"What good does it do to know that some one is driving a mine under
you? Do you desert the trench, then, until they blow it up?"
The veteran almost growled.
"Does a Frenchman desert a trench!" he said. "No, we find out exactly
where they're digging, and start a tunnel from our side, right below
the other. Then, when they're working busily, a little explosion
below them smashes their tunnel into soup and they're all dead--and
buried--without troubling any one."
"I shouldn't think a listening patrol would be so dangerous, then,"
said the boy, "if you've only got to crawl out and listen."
"But there's others listening, too! If they hear a move, or think that
they hear a move, up goes a star shell, bright as day, to show you
sprawled on the ground. Your only chance is to lie still, like a dead
man. But, lots of times, even if they think you're dead they'll turn a
machine-gun on you, just to make sure. You don't have to imitate being
dead any more, then. I know of six officers, right in this sector, who
have been killed in listening-patrol work, and I couldn't count how
many men."
He leaned forward and stared out into space gloomily.
"I don't call this--war," he said in a lower voice. "I can't call it
war when a soldier's chief weapons are a pickax and a spade for digging
trenches--and graves. And--I wanted to be an officer!" He stared out
upon the faded world and repeated slowly, "I wanted to be an officer! I
wanted to lead men into--that!"
"You lead men now!" said the boy.
The fire of responsibility and pride flashed back into the dull eyes
and involuntarily the veteran stood up.
"I lead men now," he cried, "and I'll lead them till we drive the
Germans back from the last foot of the soil of France!"
He strode off to his multifarious duties with swing and determination
in his step.
It was three days after that when Horace, who was gradually
acclimatizing to the nerve-racking cannonade of the battlefield, became
conscious that it was steadily increasing in intensity. The clouds hung
low, muffling the resonance and emphasizing the sharp reports of the
cannon. The moist, sluggish air, full of unimaginable odors, became
pungent with sulphur, powder, the burnt smell of calcined soil and the
fumes of charred wool arising from the ignited clothing of the unburied
dead on No Man's Land.
Significant, too, that evening, was the appearance of wagon-loads of
wire. One of the men groaned aloud as he saw it,
"Zut! That means some dodging of bullets to-night!"
Never, till Time has ceased to be, will any man calculate the number of
deaths which have been caused by that entrapment born in the brain of
some fiend--wire entanglement.
Wire! The strangler!
Wire! The man-trap!
Wire! That grips a soldier with malicious glee and holds him fast to an
immediate or a lingering death.
Wire! Which lies before every heroic effort, which throws its snaky
coils around the feet and around the nerves of the bravest.
Embodiment of hate, of diabolic trickery, of malign expectancy,
arch-creator of despair--Wire!
For every mile of fighting front, there are a thousand miles of wire,
with a weight of 110 tons. For every mile of front, 12,000 standards
and 12,000 pickets must be used. Withal, that thousand miles of wire
has cost a thousand lives to put it up and keep it in repair, that,
when the time may come, it may cost the lives of two thousand of the
enemy.
Just as the character of the fighting shows the nature of troops, so
does the wire that they use. The German wire is put up by machinery.
It is a harder, tougher wire than is used by the Allies, with curved
barbs, altogether a more efficient thing in itself. But, by reason of
that very solidity, it affords greater resistance to shell-fire, and
therefore, under heavy bombardment, funnels of passage can be driven
through it, by which troops may assault the trenches it is designed to
protect.
British wire is thinner, lighter, sharper. It is irregularly
constructed, with pitfalls. It is largely put up by knife-rests,
afterwards staked to the ground. It stretches over a wide space,
as a rule, with the result that while shell-fire beats it down and
explosions may uproot the stakes, the ground remains a hideous tangle
of treachery for the feet.
A form of wire used on the French front consists of two spiral
coils, four feet in diameter, wound loosely in opposite directions
and entangled. It is so loose and yields so little resistance that
shell-fire, however much it may blow the coils into the air, only
entangles it the more. The spiral coils retain their form. Moreover,
most important of all, it cannot be crossed by throwing planks upon it,
for the coils give way and the plank drops in between. Nothing but a
bridge of hurdles--or the bodies of dead men--will serve for passage
over it.
Well the soldiers knew what the strengthening of wire under an
increased bombardment implied.
The Germans were preparing to assault.
If further assurance were needed, Horace found it in the tramping of
feet as reënforcements came rolling up from the rear. What men were
these?
These were the unafraid!
These were the terror of the enemy!
The Moroccan Division! Chosen for the moments of danger, picked for
occasions when savage ferocity is required, the Africans wait for the
word of command.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Sphere."_
FRENCH TANK CUTTING WIRE.
Note the lower lines and greater speed of the French design compared
with the British, more mobile but less powerful.]
"They march past," said Henri Barbusse, describing them at the front,
"with faces red brown, yellow or chestnut, their beards scanty and
fine, or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats yellowish-green, and
their muddy helmets displaying the crescent instead of our grenade.
From flat or angular faces, burnished like new coins, one would say
that their eyes shine like balls of ivory and onyx. Here and there in
the file, towering above the rest, comes the impassive black face of a
Senegalese sharpshooter. The red flag with a green hand in the center
goes behind the company.
"These demon-men, who seem carved of yellow wood, of bronze or of
ebony, are grave and taciturn; their faces are disquieting and secret,
like the threat of a snare suddenly found at your feet. These men are
drunk with eagerness for the bayonet and from their hands there is no
quarter. The German cry of surrender, 'Kamerad!' they answer with a
bayonet thrust, waist-high."
Their presence, also, told its story.
A counter-assault was planned.
Rarely do the Moroccans hold the trenches. It is not their kind of
fighting, nor would their bodies, used to the sun of North Africa,
endure the cold and wet of the muddy trench. They are the troops of the
advance. There are no prisoners, no wounded, after they have leaped
into a trench. Their trail is the trail of savage death.
All the next day the bombardment increased in violence, and Horace,
at his military switchboard, plugged calls to distant quarters for
reënforcements. Everywhere along the line, when the early dusk fell,
men were standing to arms or marching to the threatened sector.
One section of trench was wiped out with the concentration of high
explosive shells; wire, fire trench, communication trench and their
living defenders being blown into an unrecognizable, pockmarked mass.
Another trench was hastily dug behind and craftily wired. There the
assault would come.
The noise was deafening, maddening. One felt the slow approach of
insanity. Men sprang up here and there with frantic cries that the
appalling nerve-racking din might cease, even for a second. A few went
mad, and their hands were bound by their comrades until the crisis was
past.
A gray, evil earth; a gray, evil sky, with bomb-dropping aeroplanes
overhead like vultures waiting to swoop down upon their carrion prey.
Upon that scene night fell.
On that small section of the trenches not less than 50,000 projectiles
had fallen that evening. The shrill whistling of bullets, the baby's
wail of falling torpedoes, the spattering "whit" "whit" of ricochetting
fuses, the six-fold squall of the 77's, the whine of the small
howitzers, and the roar of large shell formed a shrieking arch in the
tortured and glutted air.
Nor was the French artillery silent. The batteries of "Soixante-Quinze"
replied incessantly. From time to time the bellow as of a prehistoric
bull told that the 8.2-inch gun was bodily tearing holes and men in
the enemy's trenches. The long thin Rimailho sent its 5.9-inch shell
with the swift flight of a vengeful meteor and the new great 10-inch
howitzer looped its 240-pound shell upon the dug-outs where the men
were sheltering. There is neither shelter nor men after that shell has
fallen.
The guards in the advance trenches were redoubled. Extra supplies of
bombs and hand-grenades were served out.
Under arms, silent, expectant, grim, stood the Moroccan brigade. Their
turn was coming, soon.
The night dragged on. No one went to sleep, for sleep was impossible
under the fury of noise.
The Germans, systematic in everything, over-systematic in everything,
never commence an assault before midnight. At half-past eleven o'clock,
Horace plugged in for the order to be given for the barrage fire to
begin.
The whirlwind of vertically-falling flame shut off the German lines in
a tawny curtain of annihilation.
Now and then rockets shot up, red, green and white, writing artillery
messages on the sky.
The calcium whiteness of star shells illuminated the gruesome zone of
No Man's Land, void, deserted and desolate.
On its horrid bleakness, nothing moved. Its pallid stillness
intensified the menace.
Officers and men glanced anxiously at the watches fastened on their
wrists.
Behind, the Moroccan brigade stood motionless. They even laughed in
eagerness. It was a jangling laugh. White men who heard it, shivered.
It was not yet midnight, but, suddenly, a vicious crackle of rifles far
to the left suggested that there, the moment was at hand.
Not yet the attack, it was a patrol of German wire-cutters, trying to
sneak up under cover to make an opening.
"Cr-a-a-a-a-ck!"
A machine-gun spoke. The wire-cutters pitched headlong. The young
officer, wounded, tried to crawl back to the lines.
"Crack!"
One rifle spoke. Even at night a sharpshooter does not miss. The figure
of the German officer moved no more.
The German bombardment, hitherto directed against the batteries far to
the rear, began to draw forward. It approached the rear of the trenches
where the dug-out for the telephone was situated.
"Afraid?" the officer asked Horace.
"Yes," the boy answered, "but game!"
A shell fell a dozen yards away. The burst smashed in the roof of the
dug-out. A flying piece of concrete grazed the officer's cheek. It bled
freely.
"Hit, sir?" the boy asked anxiously.
"Nothing! My cheek!"
He telephoned an order.
The Moroccans, unwillingly, take cover in a shelter-trench. They
dislike the underground, but it is no use to stand and be shot down
uselessly.
Bombs and grenades fall like a hail of fire.
The telephone bell rings continuously. Every one of the seventeen wires
running to the switchboard is working. Horace is on the alert, his
fingers as electric as the wires he is handling.
A growing nervousness runs through the lines, making the whole army
tingle like a single human organism vibrant with life.
All the world is in activity or in readiness.
Medical troops pass by, carrying out the wounded from the bombardment.
An enemy patrol dashes forward to destroy the wire, knowing that it
will never return alive. It is met by a storm of rifle-fire, but those
who survive, cut. A hole is made. The last German falls.
A French patrol rushes out to mend the gap, throwing coils here and
there and is, in its turn, wiped out by grenadiers.
The hateful eyes of searchlights peer over the zone of destruction. It
is deserted--as yet.
What is that--a shout?
Midnight!
There is one last furious burst from trench mortars, howitzers and guns.
The white lights, with all the accusing whiteness of the fingers of a
thousand dead, cease their groping and point to the farther side of No
Man's Land.
They come!
Black in the whiteness of that intense light, the wave rolls up.
The silent plain crawls with running, staggering, falling, crawling
men. The gray-white expanse speckles rapidly with its spotting of dead.
Into the barrage of fire the wave plunges. It is the end, surely,
nothing can get through.
The miracle of escape is demonstrated again. If the masses be large
enough, you cannot kill them all. With two-thirds dead, ten thousand
men break through. They plunge forward with lowered heads and bristle
of bayonets. Every third man is a bomb-thrower.
"Let them come nearer, boys!"
Every man holds his breath.
"Fire!"
A solid blast of flame outlines the fire trench. In the white glare
of searchlights and star-shells illumining the scene as though by a
continuous river of lightning, the wave is seen to waver. Some fall
flat, others sink down quietly, others, again, drop to hands and
knees and crawl on, yet others, clutched by the wounded in their
death-grip, free themselves with a bayonet thrust--their brothers,
their comrades!--and rush on.
The machine guns claim their prey by scores, by hundreds every minute.
It does not stop the wave.
Their eyes fixed and staring, as though they were figures in their own
nightmares, they leap into the trench, hurling a last shower of hand
grenades as they come.
It is the butt and the steel now.
They have reached the trench but they have not won it.
Around each machine gun a special fight gathers.
Another wave is coming. It passes through the barrage fire again and
dashes for the trench, already half taken.
Ah! What is that?
The 75's!
The strident roar of unnumbered batteries, with shells timed to the
second, breaks loose behind the French lines. The second wave meets
that wall of lead. It does not waver, it collapses.
A third wave--how they are driven on to death, those Germans!
The first wave is nearly gone now, the hand to hand struggle in the
trench is nearly over and the reserves are creeping in.
But the third wave?
Four mines explode simultaneously. Scores of bodies are thrown in the
air. Dozens are thrown down by the sheer impact of the air.
The moment has come.
"Africans! On!"
There is no shouting as they leap over the parapet, but the glitter of
their eyes suffices.
The third wave breaks and flees.
"Forward, my children, forward!"
The cry of the officers runs along the line.
The men do not need to be told. The Germans have failed. Now is the
counter-assault. Now they have a taste of their own medicine.
"Forward, my children, forward!"
But they, too, have machine guns; they, too, have rifles; they, too,
have shrapnel and their wire entanglements stretch before us. The
French fall as their men fall, but the French commanders will not waste
life like theirs.
"Fall back, my children, they have had enough!"
Slowly the bombardment dies down to a watchful fire against a
repetition of the assault. With countless false alarms the hours of
the night pass by.
The gray day breaks slowly.
The trenches are full of dead and No Man's Land is a sight of redoubled
horror.
Full daylight comes and shows the scene as desolate as ever, the long
line of trenches stretching unbroken from Switzerland to the sea.
All the heroism, the courage, the mad endeavor, the agony, the
slaughter, what has it brought to either side?
Nothing.
All that the official communiqués can say, whether sent out from Berlin
or from Paris, will be:
"The enemy's attack was repulsed."
Has nothing been gained?
Yes! The French trenches are still French. From this much of French
soil the foreigner's foot is banished. Aggression, greed, and hate
have made another violent effort to win a strip of territory for their
befouling and blackening touch, have tried--and the motionless figures
on No Man's Land are France's answer.
Yesterday's clouds have fled and the golden sunshine floods the ravaged
fields; it pours into the windows of field hospitals on the French and
German sides alike, it blesses with the hope of the future the soldier
who will recover and eases the pain of him who looks upon his last sun;
it shows the African sharpening his steel for the next charge, and the
general planning the next assault; it shines into distant countries
whence men are coming to take the places of those that have gone before.
Heroes all!
Yet the communiqué says only:
"The enemy made a violent assault and was repulsed."
CHAPTER IX
THE DEMON FACES
"Croquier!"
"But yes, my boy, it is I!"
The boy ran forward eagerly to greet his old friend, for the moment
ignoring the dogs by which he was surrounded, and then stopped and
looked fixedly at his comrade.
"Your arm?" he queried.
The hunchback shrugged one shoulder.
"It is gone, as you see," he answered.
"But how?"
"It was my fate, no doubt," the other responded. "Destiny had decided
that I should give an arm to the Germans; so, since the military
authorities would not give me the opportunity to lose it at the front,
I left it behind me in Paris."
"What happened?" Horace persisted.
"It was a little nothing," the hunchback replied. "A German bird
dropped a shell out of his beak on the munitions factory where I was
working."
"And a splinter hit you?"
"Several."
"Why didn't you dodge?"
"I couldn't. You see," the hunchback continued, "there was a girl
there."
"And then?" demanded the lad impatiently. "Don't stammer so, Croquier,
tell the story!"
"It was a tiny nothing," his comrade repeated, somewhat shamefacedly.
"It was this way. In the factory where I was working, there were many
brave girls working also, brave girls, for the work was dangerous. It
was especially dangerous, because there was a church on one side and a
hospital near by. A Boche aviator always tries to hit a hospital when
he can. The Red Cross to him is as it would be to a bull."
"I've noticed that," the boy agreed. "At the front, here, they shell
the field hospitals every chance they get. But tell the story!"
"One foggy morning, then," the hunchback went on, "about a week before
Christmas, an aviator who had escaped our air-sentries by reason of the
mist, let fall a bomb. I feel sure it was meant for the hospital, but
it hit us instead. I was working on the top floor. The bomb--it was
quite a little one--came through the roof. I happened to be the one to
see it coming and I saw, at once, that it would fall on the stone bench
in front of which the girls were working.
"It was not the time for politeness, you understand, so I swept my left
arm round, and the girl who was working next to me fell down flat.
"I must have been a little slow in bringing down my arm after I had
swung it round, for the shell struck the bench at the same second and
the splinters collected in my hand and wrist. The hand was almost quite
cut off. The doctors said it was a lovely amputation--they are droll
fellows, those doctors--but to make the matter more sure, they cut off
my arm a little higher, as you see. It was to prevent infection, they
said."
"And the girl?"
The hunchback looked grave.
"She was black and blue for a week," he said. "You see, I am rather
strong and perhaps I hit her a little too hard."
"But you saved her life!"
"That, of course," said the Frenchman, simply; "what else would any one
do?"
"And were you the only one hurt?"
"Alas, no!" sighed Croquier. "It is there that I was a fool. If I had
hit two girls, one on either side, it would have been very good. But I
had a sharp tool in my right hand and I did not think of it. The brave
little one on that side was killed. No one else was hurt. It was a
wonderful escape."
"I don't quite see it that way," the boy retorted. "One girl killed and
one man crippled, by a small aëroplane bomb, looks to me more like a
catastrophe than an escape. What happened to the girl whose life you
saved?"
"She was as kind as she was brave," the hunchback answered. "She was
very rich, or, rather, she had been so before the war, though she had
put on workmen's clothes and was slaving in a munitions factory. She
was doing it for France.
"Every day that I was in the hospital she came to see me after working
hours. So did other of the operatives. They were all very kind, but
she was the kindest. It was she who secured permission for me to have
the 'captive Kaiser' on the little table beside my hospital bed. The
doctors could refuse her nothing. She had a smile, ah! one to remember!"
Horace smiled at the mental picture of the grim, black eagle with the
yellow eyes, iron-caged, in the white, cool cleanliness of a hospital
ward.
"It was Mademoiselle Chandon, too," Croquier continued, "who enabled me
to come here to the front. I am a general, no less, my boy, now. I am
the General of this army of dogs."
"So I see," the lad agreed. "But I didn't know that you knew anything
about dogs."
"Have you forgotten, my boy," the hunchback answered, "that, when I was
a small urchin, I traveled with the circus? I am sure I have told you
stories of that time. My master was the animal trainer and many were
the tricks that he taught me. One does not forget what one has learned
in childhood.
"Mademoiselle Chandon, she whose pretty face I was so fortunate as to
save with my arm, formerly was rich, as I have said. Before the war,
her father had owned magnificent kennels and he was forever lamenting
that he could not give his dogs to the army. But they were not trained.
"'But I, Mademoiselle,' I said to her, 'behold, I can train dogs. That
does not take two hands!'
"She clapped her little palms together with delight and ran away to her
big house in the town, which was being used as a hospital for the blind.
"It was, perhaps, about a week after that, that the old nobleman,
her grandfather, came to see me in the hospital. It must needs be her
grandfather who came. Her father was an officer in the Cuirassiers. The
family had given all their automobiles to the army for staff purposes,
so the old nobleman came himself through the streets on foot.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "La Grande Guerre."_
MACHINE-GUN DOG-TEAM IN BELGIUM.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
EACH KENNEL INHABITED BY ONE WISE, SILENT DOG.
Note that these kennels are drilled out of solid rock as a protection
against dropping shells.]
"'So, my fine fellow,' he said to me, 'after saving my daughter's life,
you want to train my dogs so that they may get crippled, eh?'
"'That is as Monsieur le Comte wishes,' I made reply.
"'I shall give myself the pleasure of taking you to the country with me
when I go, next week,' he said.
"Ah, it is the old families who understand true courtesy!
"He had nearly a hundred dogs. They were a little too much inbred,
perhaps, and therefore over-nervous, but good dogs. Monsieur le Comte
gave me the gardener's cottage to live in--the gardener is in the
trenches at Verdun--and I spent two happy months teaching the dogs."
"That's why my letters never reached you, then," said Horace. "I always
wrote to our old address."
"I think the landlady died when I was in the hospital," answered
Croquier. "She fell ill soon after you left. And, you remember, she was
very old."
"She was old," the boy agreed. "But why didn't you ever write to me?"
"I did, many times. Naturally, I wrote to the Motorcycle Corps of the
Fourth Army, but I never received a response."
"Of course," said the boy thoughtfully, "that wouldn't reach me. My old
motor-cycle has been idle for several months. When I found that there
wasn't any more dispatch work to do, I took a military telephone course
at the camp school."
"So you're a telephonist, now!"
"And you're a dog general!"
"I have some beauties, too!" Croquier looked around at the little
rock-cut kennels with manifest pride. "They're so clever that I'm
afraid, some morning, I'll come out and find them all talking."
"What do you teach them to do?" asked Horace, smiling at the
exaggeration.
"I train them into three different lines of work," the hunchback
answered. "One set is taught to serve on listening-posts and to assist
on sentry duty, another group is trained to carry messages, and the
third group is taught to hunt for the wounded when a battle has been
raging over a large space of ground."
"What does a dog do at a listening-post?" Horace asked. "Does he bark
when he hears something?"
"Not a bark, not a sound!" the hunchback answered. "I teach them to
bite a man's ankles gently, so!" He bent down and with his strong
fingers nipped Horace just above the heel. "Then the sentry knows that
there is an alarm, for a dog's hearing is much keener than a man's. If
the sentry is lying down, I teach the dog to pay no attention to him
but to run to the sentry at the next listening-post. Then the second
sentry knows that there is an alarm, and also that the man at the next
post is either dead or wounded. From that listening-post a message is
sent back, sometimes by telephone, sometimes by messenger, sometimes by
message or liaison dog. Star shells are meantime shot up to illumine
that particular bit of trench, and the machine guns spray death there."
"And the message dogs, how do you work them?" the boy asked.
"The dogs of liaison are used on advanced post work, or in saps, or
when tunneling is done for a mine. Sometimes it is necessary to send
back for reënforcements and a man cannot be spared. Then a message
is attached to a dog's neck and he is told to go. He gallops back to
the headquarters which is his home for the time being and the man in
charge takes the message and gives him a feed. The dogs are kept hungry
and they know that whenever they take a message they will get a good
dinner. I tell you, my boy, they do not stop to play along the road!"
"And the Red Cross dogs?"
"I have only a few of those," the hunchback answered, "chiefly Belgian
dogs, because the Red Cross is using a great many dogs from Mount St.
Bernard, dogs which have already been taught by the monks to find
travelers lost in the snow.
"Then I have ratting terriers, a few rough-coated fox terriers, which
have a natural instinct for fighting rats, and a number of Irish
terriers which have to be trained to the work. When properly taught,
they are much the better."
"I don't see why," the boy objected; "I should think that dogs which
didn't have to be trained would be keener after the rats."
"So they are," the trainer replied, "if we were dealing with ordinary
rats. But the savage rats which have developed in the trenches,
creatures which are sometimes ferocious enough to kill and devour
the severely wounded, are sometimes more than the snappy little
fox-terriers can manage. Some of those rats have a body eight inches
long from snout to root of tail and weigh over a pound. The hard wiry
coat and tough skin of the Irish terrier is a good protection against
the terrible down-slashing stroke of a rat's teeth. Besides which, the
Irish terrier is a much more determined fighter, when aroused, and
his square jaw is far more powerful than that of his black-and-white
cousin."
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
MESSAGE DOG WEARING GAS MASK.
In order to escape poison fumes, dogs of the liaison have to be trained
to wear masks, like soldiers.]
"Why not use ferrets to drive the rats out the trenches, just as they
do to drive them out of granaries and warehouses in the city?"
"Too unsafe," the hunchback answered. "We can't spare men enough to
send them rat-hunting with ferrets, and if we simply turned the ferrets
loose, they might multiply so fast that they would kill off all the
rats and then become a tenfold worse danger. A ferret is twice as long
as a rat and is the most murderous creature that draws the breath of
life. A plague of ferrets would be fearful. They would be worse than
poison gas, which is the thing that troubles me most in the kennels
here."
"Why here?" asked the boy in surprise, "you're far enough in the rear
to escape poison gas, surely?"
"Yes, but my dogs have to work at the front," the hunchback explained,
"and they need protection, just as much as the men in the fire trench.
The dogs have to become accustomed to wearing gas-masks, just like
soldiers. It's hard on the dogs, too, because a dog doesn't breathe
much through his nose when he's running but through his mouth and so
the mask has to be made in a different way.
"You'd never believe the amount of trouble I have in trying to teach my
dogs to keep from scratching the gas-masks off with their paws. I've
got some little puppies that I keep in gas-masks all the time. I only
take their alkali-soaked bonnets off at their breakfast and dinner
time. They even sleep in them."
"Poor little beggars!" exclaimed Horace, "and they haven't even got the
satisfaction of realizing why they have to do it."
"Well," said the hunchback, gravely, "I always tell them 'It's for
France!' Because," he added, half-seriously, "one can never tell how
much a dog understands."
Horace spent the whole of his day off duty with his old friend and
returned that evening to his telephone station, full of stories of the
hunchback's wonderful dogs. With great gusto he recounted to his friend
the veteran the story of the canine gas-masks.
"Luckily, as yet we haven't needed them here," the sergeant-major
answered, "though I suppose we may expect gas at any time. It's a
dirty, sneaking way of making war, I think! The Boches only started
that against the British because they hate them so. You know their
'Chant of Hate':
"'You we hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate
by water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, We
love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone, England!'
When you hate anybody as much as that, I suppose, even poison gas seems
justified."
"One hardly realizes," said Horace, thoughtfully, "that any nation
could work up such a hate."
"Germany is worse poisoned by her hate than any one of our poor
asphyxiated soldiers is poisoned by their chlorine gas. Yet it's a
terrible thing to be gassed. I saw some of its victims on that sector
to which I was transferred for a while, this spring. A gassed man is
made blind and dumb; sometimes the sight returns, and sometimes it does
not. The tongue is swollen to nearly double its normal size, ulcerated
and blotched with black patches. The lungs are attacked so badly that
quite often the blood vessels burst and the man chokes to death with
bubbling frothy blood. The arms and legs turn a mottled violet color.
The pulse is no more than a faint flutter. Even those who recover have
their health so badly wrecked that they can never march or work again.
To lift the hands over the head a few times drives a gassed man into a
violent perspiration, and to walk upstairs produces exhaustion, while
others, for the rest of their lives, will never be able to eat a solid
meal."
"But did that poison gas do the Germans any good?" the boy asked. "Did
it achieve any military gain?"
"Yes," the veteran admitted, "it did. It almost won them the war. If
they had known as much about poison gas when they started it as they
do now, they would have gobbled up the little piece of Belgium which
they have never been able to win and thus secured a hold on the English
Channel coast."
"What stopped them?"
"Two things," the veteran replied, "the valor of the Canadians and
the fact that the poison gas system which they used at the beginning
was fixed and not mobile. When the fiendish fumes were first directed
against fighting troops, they were projected from fixed gasometers, and
the pipes leading from them were permanent and solidly made, so that
they would not leak gas into their own trenches. That meant that the
fumes could only be wafted from the one fixed point."
"When was it first used?"
"On April 22," the veteran answered.[20] "It was the Duke of
Würtemberg's army which had the foul dishonor of being the first to
employ the evil thing. About five o'clock in the evening, from the
base of the German trenches and over a considerable stretch of the
line, there appeared vague jets of whitish mist. Like the vapors from
a witch's caldron they gathered and swirled until they settled into
a definite low-hanging cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yellow
above, where it reflected the rays of the sinking sun. This ominous
bank of vapor, impelled by a northeastern breeze, drifted slowly across
the space which separated the two lines, just at the point where the
British and French commands joined hands. The southernly drift of the
wind drove it down the line.
"The French troops, staring over the top of their parapet at this
curious cloud, which, for the time being, ensured them a temporary
relief from the continuous bombardment, were observed suddenly to throw
up their hands, to clutch at their throats and to fall to the ground in
the agonies of asphyxiation.
"Many lay where they had fallen, while their comrades, absolutely
helpless against this diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the
mephitic mist and made for the rear, overrunning the lines of trenches
behind them. Some never halted until they had reached Ypres, while
others rushed westwards and put the canal between themselves and the
enemy.
"The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and took possession of the
successive lines of trenches, tenanted only by dead garrisons, whose
blackened faces, contorted figures and lips fringed with blood and foam
from their bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died.
Some thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of 75's and four
British batteries were the trophies won by this disgraceful victory.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_
THE ZOUAVE BUGLER'S LAST CALL.
"... he tore off his protecting mask, sent his anguished appeal to his
comrades in the rear, and then lurched forward to die an agonizing
death."]
"It was especially terrifying to the Africans. They were ready for
any form of fighting, but brigades such as the Moroccans, born and
brought up under a vivid primitive fear of sorcery, were--for the first
time in their history--driven into panic. They were willing to charge
against men, no matter what the odds, but not against magic, and our
officers had great difficulty in rallying them, even two or three days
afterwards. When, however, the Algerian and Moroccan troops became
convinced that it was the work of men and not of afrits or djinns, they
had but one desire--revenge.
"Yet the Germans gained far less by this advantage than they should
have done, for they wasted their time in consolidating the trenches
they had won. A marvelous opening was before them, but for lack of
personal dash, their best opportunity passed away forever. 'They sold
their souls as soldiers,' as one of the English writers, Sir Conan
Doyle, expressed it, 'but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had the
Germans had a corps of cavalry ready and passed them through the gap,
it would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.'"
"'They sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor
one.' That's a good phrase," repeated Horace, "I'll remember it."
"It was really the most dangerous moment of the war," the veteran
continued, "for it was the only time in the war that the Germans
actually broke through. They had not broken through in Belgium. They
had not broken through--save for advance cavalry--at Charleroi. They
had not broken through on the British left in the retreat from Mons,
though it was a near shave. They had not broken through at Foch's right
in the Battle of the Marne, though in a few hours more they must have
done so. But they broke through at Ypres. The initial poison gas attack
pierced the Allied lines for the first time.
"Then the hidebound German strategy, which wins a few battles for them
and loses twice as many more, became their ruin. Finding themselves
on the farther side of the line, it seemed a supreme opportunity to
adopt flanking tactics. The Canadians--whom the Germans hated equally
with the Australians and twice as much as the English, if that were
possible--held the line to the north of the sector which had been
pierced by the aid of poison gas. The Germans hungrily turned on the
Canadians to encircle and crumple them up.
"They soon found that they had clutched a spiny thistle in bare hands.
"From three sides they advanced upon the Canadians, ranging their
artillery in a devastating cross-fire. Not a man in the Canadian
regiments expected to survive. Few did. In the teeth of every
conceivable projectile, Canadian reënforcements came up to dare and
die. Again the Germans, having recharged their reservoirs, opened their
poison gas valves. But the direction of the attack was different and
the wind blew the fumes away. The Germans, though in gas-masks (worn
for the first time that day), were not sufficiently protected and
hundreds died from their own infernal device. The gas was shut off. In
the night the wind changed and on Friday morning another discharge of
gas was sent against the Canadian lines.
"The Canadian Highlanders received that discharge, and, though they
showed themselves to be among the most gallant soldiers who ever fought
like heroes in a righteous cause, they were compelled to fall back.
Yet, even so, the Teutons did not break the line. On every side, the
German forces poured in. They threw army corps after army corps into
the gap. At one time, there were fourteen Germans against one Canadian,
and the artillery concentration was as sixty shells to one.
"Yet the men held firm, knowing, that hour by hour, even minute by
minute, the gap behind them was being closed by reënforcements.
They died, and died willingly, to save the day. Neither poison
gas--remember, they had no masks, for the gas was a surprise only of
the night before--artillery, nor overwhelming odds could break the
line. The officers ran to the foremost places in the trenches and
died, fighting, with the men. Every Canadian reserve was hurled into
the breach, to charge and counter-attack for a few minutes before
they died, that others, following, also might hold the foe for a few
moments, and then die.
"By the middle of Friday morning, British reënforcing brigades had
come up. They reached the Canadian lines.
"The British halted, sent up a cheer for Canada, for a heroic fight
seldom equaled in the annals of war, a fight which has given Canada a
glory equal to the splendor of Belgium at Liége, of France at the Marne
and of the Irish and Scotch at the Aisne, and, cheering still, the
British drove at the Germans.
"Without a single moment of rest for two days and nights, the struggle
continued, and, by Sunday morning, the gap was closed and the German
opportunity was gone. Every advance was dammed back by rifle-fire, even
though the fingers that pulled the triggers were already writhing in
the intolerable agony which precedes a death from asphyxiating gas.
"Once, indeed, during the second British charge, all seemed lost, for
the charge failed, and halted. For a moment it seemed to give way, then
a cry ran along the English lines.
"'The Bowmen! The Bowmen of Agincourt!'
"And the British, peering through the cloud of gas, saw, before them,
the ghostly shapes of ranks upon ranks of English archers, such as had
fought upon the field of Europe exactly five hundred years before.
Their short armor gleamed against the hideous greenish cloud and the
bowstrings twanged as they released the cloth-yard arrow shafts, drawn
to the head.
"Once before, at Mons, at the time when St. George also had appeared on
the right wing of the English, the left wing had seen the bowmen, when
they drove back the flanking German host, and victory had been theirs
for the moment.
"Remembering this, triumph rang in the shout which reverberated through
the English lines:
"'The Bowmen! The Bowmen of Agincourt!'
"Neither poison gas, explosive shells, machine-guns, rifles nor bayonet
could stop that rush. Backed up by three brigades of Indian troops, the
English charged. They reached the front line of the trenches when once
more the ominous yellow-green mist rolled on. In a moment the Indians
were encircled by the dead fumes. Many of the men died where they
stood. The mephitic cloud passed slowly over, but every man who was not
dead was stupefied. Into the mass the rifle and shrapnel fire fell. Of
one of the Indian regiments, seventy answered the roll-call that night,
in another, only eleven.
"The famous Hill 60 was taken by gas. There, with a favorable wind,
the Boches poured out gas in such vast quantities as to eddy and swirl
around the base of the hill and finally to submerge it. The crest
disappeared from sight like a rock by the advancing tide. Out of the
green death, finally, came two men. There appeared staggering towards
the dug-out of the commanding officer of the Duke's regiment, two
figures, an officer and an orderly. The officer was pale as death and
when he spoke, his voice came hoarsely from his throat. Beside him, his
orderly, with unbuttoned coat, his rifle clasped in his hand, swayed as
he stood. The officer said slowly in his gasping voice:
"'They have gassed the Duke's. I believe I was the last man to leave
the hill. The men are all up there dead. They were splendid. I thought
I ought to come and report.'
"He died that night."
"But it couldn't be like that now," said Horace, "every one's got a
gas-mask."
"That doesn't save everything," the veteran replied. "You've heard the
story of the Zouave Bugler's last call?"
"No," said the boy, "tell me."
"It was during a strong German offensive on one of our exposed
sectors," the sergeant-major began, "when our front trench was exposed
to an extraordinarily intense shell-fire, accompanied by a terrific
cloud of asphyxiating gas.
"The few survivors were almost in extremis, fighting furiously and
doggedly, though without hope other than that of selling their lives
as dearly as they could and sending as many Germans as possible to the
halls of death which they had prepared for others.
"Help was absolutely necessary if the position was to be held, and,
as the men knew well, if their position fell, others would be in
danger. Yet, though reënforcements were imperative, any communication
with the second line seemed impossible. The telephone wires were like
the trenches, broken and pulverized, and no man could move from that
inferno alive.
"There was only one way to give the news to those behind and that was
by bugle. This meant certain death to the bugler, who would have to
lower his gas mask to sound the call. The captain hesitated to give the
order.
"The gallant _clairon_, however, did not wait for the word of command.
As soon as he realized the danger, he tore off his protecting mask,
sent his anguished appeal to his comrades in the rear and then
lurched forward to die an agonizing death, though not in vain, for his
brave deed had saved the day."
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
WHEN HOODED DEMONS TAKE THE TRENCHES.
British at Loos charging down on Germans first line. Note the two style
of bombs and the Germans surrendering a machine gun. Also note the
changed type of British gas masks.]
"Great!" cried Horace, his eyes shining.
"Great, indeed," echoed the veteran, "great, but awful. That a man's
life should depend not on his courage, not on his skill, not on his
power, but on a piece of saturated gauze before his nose--that is
awful, and it is not war."
"But masks are needed!"
"More than ever," the veteran agreed, "for since that time the Germans
have invented three different kinds of asphyxiating gas: the gases
which have a suffocating effect, so that men die from strangulation,
mainly carbonic acid and nitrogen; the poisonous gases, in which
men are killed by reason of the poison of the fumes, such as carbon
monoxide and cyanogen; and the spasm gases, in which men are killed by
the muscular and nervous spasms set up by the gases, such as chlorine,
sulphuric acid and phosgene.[21] One of our men, who was a chemist in
civil life, told me all about it."
"Which were the gases used at Ypres, where the poison gas business
first began?"
"Chlorine and bromine," the other answered, "so this chemist chap told
me. They get the chlorine by passing strong currents of electricity
through sea-water by some process he explained but which I couldn't
understand; and the bromine is a by-product that they make from the
Strasburg salts. But there's some other gases like sulphurous anhydride
and carbonyl chloride that I don't know much about."
"Did you find out how it is that the masks really prevent poisoning?"
the boy asked.
"That's simple enough. Chlorine and bromine have what this chemist
fellow called an 'affinity' for alkalies, and the gas combines with
the alkali somehow, so that all the poisonous effect is lost. French,
English and German masks are different in shape, but the idea is the
same. The Germans have a mask which fits over the nose and mouth,
filled with absorbent cotton treated with hyposulphite of sodium or
sodium carbonate. The French and English have a mask that covers the
whole head and which can be tucked under the collar of the tunic.
"The newest kind that we're using has a tin tube three inches long and
an inch in diameter, prolonged on the exterior by a rubber appendix in
which there is a valve opening outward. The valve cannot open inward
at all. So, when poison gas is seen coming, you can put on your mask
and take the tube in your teeth. You can't breathe through your mouth,
then, because the valve in the pipe won't open inward, and none of the
poison gas can get in. You breathe in through the nose and breathe out
through the mouth."[22]
"It's awfully uncomfortable," said Horace; "they make me go around with
a gas mask in my pocket, but every time I put it on for a few minutes,
I'm glad enough to take it off again."
The veteran shook his head.
"That's foolish," he said, "because you need to become accustomed to
wearing it. Practice a little bit every day. If you don't, and suddenly
find yourself in the middle of a gas cloud, you won't be able to stand
it more than five minutes. You'll feel that you're choking for air. So
you slip it off, just for a moment's relief, the green horror catches
at your throat, and you're done."
"But, as you said yourself," protested the boy, "a cloud of gas passes
over, and then it's gone."
"I said it used to be that way," the sergeant-major answered, "but
it's not that way any more. The Germans don't send their gas from big
fixed gasometers now; they have tanks which a man can carry on his back
and from which the gas is jetted by compressed air. Infantry, with
gas-masks on, can come right up behind the men carrying the gas tanks
and, just as soon as the heavy poison fumes begin to fill the trenches,
they charge."
"Isn't there any way of stopping it?"
"Only with a fearful amount of trouble and enormous expense. Poison
gas, being heavier than the air, sinks. To keep it from sinking,
then, you have to create a strong upward air current. Any bonfire
will do that. If, when a cloud of gas approaches or when men carrying
gas reservoirs approach the trenches, you can start a bonfire every
few yards along the line, the poison gas will be sucked into this
up-draught and dispersed by the heat. That has been done, several
times, and it was the only defense of the British at Ypres, before the
gas masks were hastily improvised. But that means hauling a lot of fuel
to the front, and every pound of fuel transported means a pound less
of provisions and munitions. Besides, as soon as we worked out that
kind of defense, the Germans schemed a new way to use the gas. Now they
put it into shells by compressed air. They have two of these gas shells
which they call the 'T' type and the 'K' type."
"How do we know what they call them?"
"Because those letters are painted on the ogives of the shells. The
'T' shells are filled with a very dense gas, which disperses slowly.
After a storm of these shells has fallen, the air is unbreathable for
an hour or sometimes two, according to the dampness of the weather. The
'K' shells are filled with a more powerful spasm-gas, virulent in its
effects, but which disperses rapidly.
"The first is used in curtain fire, when the Germans expect to be
assaulted. A steady dropping bombardment of 'T' shells makes a
gas-filled zone. Charging troops have to wear gas masks, for they must
pass through it. Defending troops do not need to wear masks, and, as
you know yourself, a man is twice as quick and agile without a mask.
"The second, or 'K' shell, is used when the enemy plans to make the
assault. You can't see the shells coming, there is no evidence of any
change in the enemy's lines which can be reported by an aëroplane.
No one knows when the German artillery has received orders to change
from high explosive or shrapnel to gas shells, when, suddenly, all
along the line, there drops a concerted hail of gas shells, and in ten
seconds half the men in the first line trenches are gassed. It takes
about twenty seconds to put on a gas-mask properly. It is a horrible,
vicious, and cowardly way of making war."
"But don't we use it, too?"
"We haven't yet," the veteran answered, "but we shall have to begin
soon, in self-defense.[23] Then the Boches will be sorry that they
began, for their own atrocious cruelty will return on their own heads.
But we have a new invention, too, which is gaining us more ground than
we lost by the poison gas."
"You mean the tanks?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see a tank in action," said Horace, eagerly. "But I
suppose we won't have them, here."
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_
THE APPROACH OF DOOM.
British tank, first appearing at Flers (September 15, 1916) which drove
the German Army into a panic of unreasoning terror.]
"We shall," the veteran replied, "and soon. We shall be compelled to
use them. The night before last, the Germans started using liquid
fire on our lines. That's a wicked thing, too. From what I hear, it
is a mixture of gasoline, paraffine and tar, forced out by compressed
nitrogen and ignited at the point of a long tube. It throws a jet of
fire twenty or even thirty yards.[24] It burns a man to a crisp where
he stands. No gas-mask will stop that."
"And the tanks don't mind it?"
"A tank minds nothing," was the answer.
That very night, Horace learned what a tank looked like.
As he was going off duty at midnight, he saw a squat colossal monster
come lumbering up through the dusk. A huge rotating belt on either side
dragged the Juggernaut car forward, while two wheels behind served for
steering. Two protected windows in the front gave place for machine
guns of the heavier patterns, and sponsons on either side mounted three
machine guns operating through small openings. There were thus eight
machine guns to each tank. When it is remembered that the fire of a
protected machine gun is equal to fifty men, each tank represented an
invulnerable company of 400 men. Moreover, not a shot need be wasted.
In full fire, a tank could eject 4,800 shots per minute, or 80 bullets
per second, and could carry its own fuel and ammunition.
Against the British-invented tanks all the light German trench
artillery was powerless. The tank-pilots and gunners wore gas masks,
hence gas could not stop them. Rifle bullets glanced from the
armor-plate of the tank like hail striking on a window pane. Machine
guns peppered its steel skin with no more effect than if the bullets
had been pointed peas. Liquid fire found no entrance, even if a
projector could be brought near. Nothing could damage a tank save a
high explosive shell from the heavy batteries in the rear, and no
artillerist in the world could hope to strike a small moving object
several miles away.
Early next morning the two tanks advanced. There was no road. They
needed none. With a grotesque, crawling gait, they waddled down and up
shell holes, lurched over trenches and belly-crawled ahead.
There was nothing they resembled so much as huge antediluvian tortoises
which passed unscathed amid the most ferocious prehistoric beasts,
secure in the massive protection of their shelly backs. A hurricane of
shot greeted them, till their outlines were dimmed to view in the blue
of flying steel. Not a bullet penetrated.
Slowly, cumbrously, uncouthly, careening nose down, into a hole,
climbing askew nose upwards, they sidled menacingly a tortuous course
to the German lines.
Wire!
Much the tanks cared for wire! They waddled on regardlessly, heeding
the barbed trap no more than as though pieces of pack-thread had been
stretched along the ground. Such of the wire as was tight enough they
snapped, the rest they stamped deep into the mud.
Down and up!
The tanks straddled the German first-line trench.
So far, they had been voiceless.
There had not been sign nor sound of human leading. They were the
incarnation in metal of grotesque terror. They seemed as an evil dream
of machines that had developed life: inhuman, monstrous, dire.
Then they spoke.
The German trenches on either side were swept clean of men by that
concentrated tornado spout of slaughter.
The French infantry yelled with delight and plunged into the fray after
the tanks. One of the giants lifted an eyelid, as a forward window
opened to let through a torrent of machine-gun fire. The blast scorched
and ravaged the ground before it.
With a grunt the tanks heaved their prodigious menace on.
The Germans did not wait for their coming. They scattered and fled in
all directions. They were willing enough to invent new distortions of
war, such as poison gas and liquid fire, but, in childish unreason,
they became furious when any new device was directed against them.
Yet still the brutes of steel crawled onward, growling, as their
sponsons spit flame.
For six months the trenches on either side had remained unbroken. In
sixty minutes, two tanks, backed up by the French infantry, had driven
the Germans back, captured a thousand prisoners, taken several score
machine guns and frightened an entire German army corps into wild-eyed
and headlong panic. Its morale was broken and in spite of their
officers' commands, they dared not return to the charge.
The French captured and consolidated the trenches, which were
underground forts of surprising strength. One of the communication
trenches was more than a hundred yards long, completely lined with
timber and carried so deep underground as to be safe from anything but
mining. There were dug-outs entered through a steel door, two stories
in depth, with spacious rooms closely boarded. In one such dug-out,
there were evidences that one of the officers had been living in
comfort, with his wife and child. Another was fitted with a hydraulic
mechanism for sending up excavated earth to be used in sand bags.
Some of the larger dug-outs could easily hold a platoon of men in
complete security. Several tunnels led to sniper stations, like
a manhole to a sewer, reaching the surface at high points. These
were well timbered, with iron ladders. The trenches were lined with
concrete, warm and dry. The manual labor was astounding. Contrasted
with the French trenches, roughly built and damp, the German advantages
all winter had been enormous.
The distant German batteries, changing their range to the location
of their former trenches, commenced a heavy bombardment, but the
consolidation had been rapidly effected, the French artillery had
advanced without delay, engineering companies had put up new wire
entanglements, and though, for a week without cessation, the Germans
charged again and again, they were pushed back with heavy losses.
And when, ten days later, an attack was made in force, Mesdames Tank
waddled to the front again and the Germans fled in dismay. Little by
little the German line was pushed back, little by little the soil of
France was rewon.
But, for Horace, the end was not yet.
One bright spring morning, while busy at his switchboard in the little
shelter which had been constructed for the telephone, the boy heard
a thin, high whistle and a small shell crashed through the roof. It
struck the floor and exploded, thin splinters flying in every direction.
Dazed with surprise that he had not been blown up sky high, Horace
realized that this could not be a high explosive bomb. It must be a gas
shell.
With a beating heart, he held his breath and seized his gas-mask, his
fingers fumbling in his haste as he put it on, wondering, as he did
so, that he had seen no green or yellow fumes arise.
[Illustration: _British Official Sketch_
BRINGING UP FOOD FOR THE FIRING LINE THROUGH A POISON GAS CLOUD.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_
THE BATTLE OF DEMON FACES FLINGING BOMBS IN A MIST OF GREEN DEATH]
One minute, two minutes passed, and no fumes arose. Cautiously the boy
lifted a corner of the mask and gave the merest little sniff. He smelt
nothing.
It was a false alarm!
Profoundly grateful over his escape, Horace decided that by some happy
accident, the shell which had fallen had been a gas shell, but, by some
accident of manufacture, it had escaped being filled. Evidently, he was
born lucky, he thought. Had it been a high-explosive shell, it would
have blown him to atoms; had the shell been filled with gas, he would
have been poisoned before he had time to put on his mask.
Five minutes passed.
Then the boy noticed, on the under side of his legs, just where his
weight touched the edge of the chair, a curious prickling sensation,
as though he had been stung with nettles. Unconsciously, he rubbed the
place with his hand.
That instant, wherever the weight of his hand had been, the prickling
began. His hand, too, began to smart.
Something was happening. A vague discomfort spread over the skin of
his entire body.
He blinked his eyes. The sight was dim and blurred. He could not see
clearly the holes in which to put his telephone plugs and, when he
picked one up, his fingers were burning so that he let them fall.
Something was happening.
His flesh felt raw about his neck where the collar touched it, and
where his skin had touched the chair, fire seemed to be eating him.
A black and purple light was blinding him, heavy fingers pressed on his
eyeballs.
Gropingly he managed to find the wire to headquarters.
"I'm going blind," he mumbled, in a thick voice he could not recognize
as his own, "send relief."
Relief came half an hour later and the men found Horace on the floor,
his clothing half-torn from his body and his shrill screams sunk into
hard, husky moanings.
The stretcher-bearers took him to the nearest dressing station.
One look was enough for the examining doctor.
"Put on rubber gloves," he said to his assistant, "take off every
stitch he has and burn the clothes. Don't let them touch anything. Burn
the canvas of that stretcher. Get the 'phone instruments out of that
shelter and burn the shelter. Tell the operator who is there now to
change his clothes and burn them, too, and tell him to come here for
treatment, quickly!"
"Why, Doctor, what is it?" the assistant asked.
"Blister gas," the doctor answered, "the newest horror of those German
fiends.[25] You can't see it, can't smell it, don't know it's there,
but ten minutes after you've been near it, the vile stuff raises a
thousand blisters on the skin. The poison will sometimes stay in the
clothes for weeks. Even the wood of a chair will hold the venom."
"But is it fatal?"
"Victims die from the pain, sometimes," the doctor answered. "Take this
boy here. He's had an awful dose, because, as I understand, the shell
burst right in the shelter and he soaked it in. He'll be unconscious
for quite a while and in about three days all those blisters will
break. His body will be nothing but a sheet of raw flesh. We'll have to
keep him under morphine and we'll be lucky if he pulls through."
For two long awful weeks Horace lay in a drugged state which left him
dulled and yet conscious of pain. The agony rose above the anæsthetic.
At last, exhausted, weak and still in acute torment, he came to
himself, to find the hunchback standing beside his bed.
The lad looked up feebly.
"Oh, Croquier," he said, speaking with a still raw throat, "I've been
having such a queer dream."
The hunchback leaned forward to listen to the weary, croaking voice.
"I dreamed that Father was over here, in American uniform, and that he
said:
"'We're here, my son, at last. We've lagged in late, after France and
Britain's heroism, that they may show us what we still can do to save
the world from the Hun.'
"And, Croquier, he had in his hand the cage with the 'captive Kaiser'!"
The hunchback leaned low over the bed.
"Remember Madame Maubin!" he said. "That, my boy, was not a dream, but
a prophecy!"
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Official British report, April 27, 1915. No poisonous gases or
bombs had been used by the Allies prior to this time.
[21] This anticipates a little the development of poisonous gases. Some
of these forms were not in use until 1917.
[22] This is the main principle. It is to be remembered that new
devices are constantly being experimented with and put into use on the
front.
[23] The Allies refrained from using asphyxiating gases for several
months, but by 1918, they had attained superiority in their use.
[24] First used in the spring of 1917.
[25] This gas was a development of 1918; it is known as _gas vesical_.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Retained some inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. gun-fire vs. gunfire).
Added missing umlauts to "Würtemberg" in multiple places.
Page v, changed "in not" to "is not."
Page vi, changed "L'illustration" to "L'Illustration" and "Le Monde
Illustré" to "Le Monde Illustre" for consistency with image captions.
Page viii, changed "Liège" to "Liége" for consistency.
Page 100, removed unnecessary quote before "I--I--."
Page 104, changed "Evidenly" to "Evidently."
Page 122, changed "in second" to "in seconds."
Page 156, changed "near-by" to "near by" for consistency.
Page 172, removed "he" from "he declared the hunchback."
Page 178, changed "French speak" to "French speaks."
Page 228, added missing close quote after "Yes, sir."
Page 241, changed "is orders" to "'is orders."
Page 252, changed comma to period after "upon the map."
Page 259, removed unnecessary comma from "Two days, later."
Page 308, changed "aeroplane" to "aëroplane" for consistency.
Page 311, changed "aeroplane" to "aëroplane" for consistency.
Page 350, changed "writters" to "writers."
Page 355, changed period to colon after "gasping voice."
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