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Title: The Square Jaw
Author: Henry Ruffin
André Tudesq
Release Date: March 27, 2015 [EBook #48592]
Language: English
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HENRY RUFFIN AND ANDRÉ TUDESQ
THE
SQUARE JAW
[Illustration]
THOMAS NELSON & SONS, LTD
35 & 36 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
EDINBURGH NEW YORK PARIS
Price One Shilling
THE SQUARE JAW
BY
HENRY RUFFIN AND ANDRÉ TUDESQ.
_Translated from the French._
THOMAS NELSON & SONS,
35 AND 36, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
EDINBURGH. NEW YORK. PARIS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PART I.--BATTLE OF THE ANCRE.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE IMPROMPTU VICTORY 7
II.--IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH 11
III.--THE REAL SUPERMEN 14
IV.--SURPRISES OF A MOONLIT FROSTY NIGHT 17
V.--THE BATTLE REOPENS 20
VI.--ON THE EDGE OF THE FRAY 23
EPILOGUE 24
PART II.--THE SQUARE JAWS.
I.--THE WELDING OF FRENCH AND BRITISH 31
II.--HOW THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINGENT VOTED IN
FRANCE IN FACE OF THE ENEMY 35
III.--BOELCKE'S LAND OF PROMISE 40
IV.--THE SQUARE JAW 45
V.--THE RELIEF 49
PART III.--THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH.
I.--THE PREPARATION OF THE CANADIANS 56
II.--ARRAS, THE WOUNDED TOWN 60
III.--THE GROUND OF HEROIC DEEDS 63
IV.--A DINNER OF GENERALS 66
V.--WAR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY 68
VI.--THE ART OF SAVING 71
VII.--"BROTHERS IN ARMS" 73
PART IV.--IMPRESSIONS OF "NO MAN'S LAND."
I.--AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL 79
II.--A HERO AFTER THE MANNER OF ROLAND 81
III.--MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE 84
IV.--THROUGH THE MINE AREA 87
V.--THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN 91
VI.--"RONNY" 94
VII.--PIPING OUT THE DAY 96
VIII.--Y GULLY 98
IX.--CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN "NO MAN'S LAND" 100
PART I.
THE BATTLE OF THE ANCRE.
CHAPTER I.
THE IMPROMPTU VICTORY.
The Ancre Front, 13th November.
You read the reports. The names of the places that have been taken,
the calculations of the gains, the numbers of the prisoners, leave you
cold. Words! words! It is on the field of battle, amidst the thunder
of the guns and the magic glow of fires, that one should read the
bulletins of victory.
This evening a heady, irresistible joy took possession of the Army. The
prisoners were pouring in. The men were singing in their quarters. Upon
a front 3-1/2 miles wide and nearly 1-1/2 deep our Allies had broken
the German lines on both sides of the Ancre.
They have been giving me details of the battle. From hour to hour,
here, in the midst of the troops, I am being told the incidents of the
fighting. A risky privilege!
The despatches which come to us; the despatch riders who, at the utmost
speed of their motor-cycles, bring us reports through the ruts and mud
of the roads; the messages of the telegraph--everything has assumed a
heroic quality. A feverish joy quivers in every face. Even the bell of
the telephone follows, strangely, the measure of our heart-beats.
"We owe this victory to our quickness," a Colonel tells me. "This
battle was an _impromptu_." The word is a picture. It is absolutely
right.
At six o'clock--that is to say, in the grey light of the
morning--after a short but annihilating artillery preparation, the
divisions posted in the first line dashed forward through the fog and
drizzle. The objective was three villages--Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt
on the North bank of the river, and, on the South, Saint Pierre-Divion.
Let me tell you something of the country and its difficulties.
Swamps, soggy undulations formed by the trenches and the convoys, a
wet, clayey soil, into which one sinks to the waist. Mud everywhere.
Slime everywhere. One must slide down the funnels and holes that the
shells have made. Thus the waves of the assault gather for their onset.
The Germans had constructed defences formed of five lines of trenches,
each alternated with at least three rows of barbed wire entanglements.
The _chevaux de frise_ and other obstacles covered, in places, a space
over 200 yards wide.
On the one hand and on the other the banks of the Ancre ran up into
bluffs like buttresses. Since his failure of the 1st of July, the enemy
has cut among these natural protections deep trenches which wind along
parallel to the course of the river. He has also set up on the slopes
powerful machine-gun emplacements and blockhouses with mortars.
The English advance went like clockwork. The secret had been well kept;
the evening before, the troops of this sector were quite unaware that
an advance was to take place.
An absolute determination inspired both officers and men. The result
of the attack was never in doubt. The trenches were taken by storm,
together with those who manned them. It was a veritable harvest of men.
The fourth line was taken at the point of the bayonet in _eighteen
minutes_.
At eight in the morning we attacked the outskirts of the three
villages. Beaumont-Hamel was the first to be taken, with its garrison.
Before Beaucourt we were brought to a halt by machine-gun fire. Saint
Pierre-Divion was outflanked. The artillery increased its range and cut
short all counter-attacks.
[Illustration: 1. IN BEAUMONT-HAMEL.]
By nine o'clock the objective was gained with complete success. The fog
grew thicker. The fire of the heavy guns and the barrage fires followed
one another without pause.
Through twilight gloom and the mists of low-lying clouds monstrous
lightnings flicker across this spectral landscape. The smallest hill is
a Sinai. In a leap of nearly 1-1/2 miles the batteries have advanced at
the same pace as the troops, taking such cover as Heaven sends them.
All this sector smokes and roars to its farthest extremities. It is as
if there were dragons squatting everywhere by the hundred and spitting
flame. Fires break out, blushing palely through the fog. Stores of
munitions explode behind the villages. It is like the brute thunder of
the earthquake.
The fiercest fighting developed at Beaumont-Hamel, where the ground
is full of great caves that run into one another. In these there was
plenty of room for four companies.
Next, the centre of interest shifted to the South bank of the
Ancre, where Y Gully commands the passage of the river and the road
to Beaucourt. This ravine, upon which three months' work had been
spent, was a positive arsenal. Every 20 yards along it there was a
machine-gun. The Germans believed it to be impregnable. This evening
the English had their own guns in it.
Victory everywhere! Three villages taken; more than 2,000 prisoners
counted already! I have just been to see them. They are encamped along
the edge of an immense bivouac. All about them the heaviest of the
guns spit out, minute by minute, their delicate ton-weight mouthfuls.
The prisoners are identified, questioned, and searched. A dazed stupor
is all that their terrified faces declare. They have suffered very
little damage, for most of them have been surprised in their caves
and dug-outs. Many of them are still wearing their helmets. Their
officers have accepted their bad fortune, one would say, gladly. There
is nothing of bravado in their carriage. The Tommies surround this
encampment curiously. With a friendliness that is very touching they
offer, some cigarettes, others food. Generosity on the one side; a
growing astonishment on the other. The German soldiers, nearly all
Silesians, accept these things with a sort of childish gratitude.
The motor-ambulances move here, there and everywhere over the clayey
fields, where the wheels of the ammunition wagons have drawn mighty
furrows, like those that peaceful toil once made here. One hardly
sees the faces of these men. They are blanks, for their thoughts are
elsewhere, within. On the other hand, one's attention is seized by such
things as their feet, mere lumps of clay, that at times the red touch
of a swathed wound enlivens. Motor-'buses--as in London--run upon the
roads. Those who are lightly wounded crowd to the top. One of them
wears a pointed helmet, where shines the two-headed eagle. Others hang
the Iron Cross upon their caps. They are all laughing and joking like
schoolboys.
The road to Bapaume, to the north, is almost all free. From to-day
begins, on this side, the siege of that town, which the Germans have
converted into a stronghold. All over the plain the English are
lighting camp-fires: and in perfect safety, since the enemy's line has
retired about 1-1/2 miles. The skirl of bagpipes, the scream of fifes,
the choruses of the men, rise into the foggy night. It proves the truth
of the saying: "To live truly is to live perilously."
Victory! And the battle goes on.
CHAPTER II.
IN FRONT OF THE MUNICH TRENCH.
Beaumont-Hamel, 15th November.
That two-hour tramp through a few kilometres of trenches was a
heart-breaking business. We floundered through holes, we were swallowed
up in bogs, while the mud that fell from the parapets gradually spread
itself over our oilskins. A steel helmet becomes wonderfully heavy
after an hour or so, and a dizzy headache soon tormented us, from the
constant right-angled turns which we were obliged to make, like so many
slaves at a cornmill. But what a reward has been ours since our arrival!
Here we are, seated at the horizontal loophole of a quite new
observation post, in the front line, in the very trench from which, the
day before yesterday, the English launched their attack.
In front, towards the left, is Beaumont-Hamel. Out of this heap of
rubbish start up three-cornered bits of wall, which give to these ruins
the look of a dwarf village. On the hillside a mangled copse looks like
those guileless charcoal strokes which one sees in a child's drawing.
To the right--Beaucourt. Here the ruin is absolute. I have hunted in
vain for any trace of man's handiwork. Even the dust of the stones has
blown away.
A few hundred yards ahead of us the men have just rushed forward. With
rifles held high they spring from the parapet into the open. They look
like an army of ants, that now moves along in a stream, now closes
together like a vice, now marks time, now plunges into vast funnels,
and again, at racing speed, surges up the gentle slope. The barbed-wire
entanglements cover acres of ground; they are the eleventh line of
the German defences. In many places the wires are so closely bunched
together that the balls cannot pass through them.
At least a brigade is engaged. One can see the company leaders quite
plainly. The shells are bursting everywhere, throwing up furious
fountains of black smoke with which bits of earth and iron are mingled.
The rolling clouds of the shrapnel seem to frame one regiment.
Ah! Bad luck! That one was well timed which burst over there on the
right, just above the company that was lying down there. The damage
must have been serious. Men lie on the ground who will never pick
themselves up again. A cloud, the colour of absinthe, hangs sullenly
over those little khaki spots.
On the right, on the left, in front, behind, with a disquieting skill
and precision, the Germans pile barrage upon barrage. Meanwhile,
without a pause, the troops advance across this hell. I can follow,
with the naked eye, every movement of an active young officer, who
is wearing a light yellow overcoat, and who is charging at the head
of his company, with a cane under his left arm and a revolver in his
right hand as calmly as if he were strolling along Regent Street or
Piccadilly.
The human wave, breaking through the barrage, disappears suddenly in
the earth. It is as if a chasm had opened to swallow all these men
at a gulp. And now, listen! For the gunfire is punctuated with sharp
detonations. It sounds like a shrill drumming, swelled by furious
shouts and cries of agony. The Tommies have entered the enemy's
lines. After a short period of bombing, they advance, yard by yard,
with the bayonet. Round the blockhouses the machine-guns rattle. We
listen anxiously to these thousand voices of the attack. Every man has
vanished. The field of vision is empty. Only the variegated smokes of
the different shells spread themselves slowly abroad. The uncertainty
is unbearable. Half an hour later we learn from the telephone that
the attack has succeeded. The brigade has done its work. We have just
witnessed, on the north bank of the Ancre, the capture of an important
trench, or rather redoubt, nearly 450 yards away from Beaumont--the
Munich Trench.
[Illustration: 2. PRISONERS.]
Here again there has been a famous haul of prisoners. More than 300
unwounded soldiers have been compelled to surrender. In a short time
the first of them cross in front of our observation post. They are
haggard, covered with mud, and their eyes are the eyes of trapped
beasts. Two of them, converted into impromptu stretcher-bearers, are
carrying a wounded officer on a stretcher that is soaked in blood.
And now the battle increases everywhere in violence. We hear that
on this side of Beaucourt some strong reserves, collected there by
the Germans, have just been surrounded and taken prisoners. A whole
brigade staff has fallen into the hands of the English. More than 5,000
prisoners have been counted already. It will take at least two days to
count all that have been taken. A genuine victory!
The "tanks" have played an honourable part in the battle, and I have
just seen two of them at work. My impressions may be summed up in these
words: a huge amazement and satisfaction.
One of them, which has been christened _The Devil's Delight_, did
marvels at Beaucourt. This deliberate leviathan, having placed itself
boldly at the head of the advancing flood of men, took up its position
at the entrance of the ruined village. At first the Germans fled.
Then, one by one, they came back. With machine-guns, bombs, rifles and
mortars they endeavoured to pierce its double shell. Nothing availed.
Squatted on its tail, the terrific tank lorded it there like a king
on his horse. It made no objection whatever to being approached. Some
sappers tried to place bombs under it, to blow it sky high. Inside it
the crew shammed dead. The Germans took heart. Ten, twenty, thirty
men, armed with screw-jacks and mallets laboured to overthrow it.
But what could even two battalions have accomplished against this
patient mastodon, whose skin was steel and whose weight was 800 tons?
A colonel, mad with rage, fired the eight barrels of his revolver at
it, point-blank. If the tank could have laughed it must have burst with
delight. Its sense of humour is a strictly warlike one.
After a full quarter of an hour of silence the Germans, believing
that the crew had been destroyed and that the monster was helpless,
surrounded it boldly and in considerable numbers. Thereupon, unmasking
its machine-guns, and opening fire from its sides, the terrible
creature began to hack them in bits, mow them down in heaps, drill them
full of holes and slay them by the dozen.
A giant miller, grinding death!
An hour later, when the larger part of the English troops succeeded
in reaching Beaucourt, they found the Germans, dead and dying, piled
around the tank. The tank says little, but to the point.
Three cheers for Mademoiselle Devil's Delight!
CHAPTER III.
THE REAL SUPERMEN.
"_We are consolidating our positions._"
(English Communiqué, 16th November.)
Here is a story.
Some time ago, on the North bank of the Ancre, in the Beaumont-Hamel
Sector, everyone was affected with a curious boredom. Nothing happened:
very little artillery fire; not so much as a pretence at an attack.
It was a dead calm. The bombs were all asleep. Muscles grew slack.
Enthusiasm staled. Boredom, that worst misery of trench life, reigned
supreme.
One evening this slackness among the troops--and it was as bad on one
side as on the other--produced a curious result. Among the Germans,
a homesick Silesian began to sing some of the carols of his own
country. His voice rose freshly into the fresh night. At the same time
on the English side, a Highlander, stirred by the sweetness of the
autumn evening, blew a few shrill notes upon his fife. The voice of
the man and the fife supported one another, and so a concert began,
a concert of old songs, the simple happy songs of the peasant. The
English shouted to the Germans, "Give us Gott Strafe England!" and the
Germans obliged with the "Song of Hate." "Encore! Encore!" cried the
Highlander, whose fife was seeking to catch the air that the enemy was
singing. The song began again, the fife supporting it. Then it was
taken up by all the English. But to what sort of a rhythm! The "Song
of Hate," slow as plain song, had suddenly become, as it crossed the
trenches, a crazy, jerky, rollicking ragtime, a tune for the _can-can_.
The Germans supposed that they were being chaffed. By way of applause,
they let fly a shower of bombs. To this compliment the English replied
in kind. Then the night closed down upon a boredom more dreadful than
ever.
I have told you this story as a sort of commentary upon the epigram
in which a certain colonel explained this very successful two days'
battle: "Our attack, like our victory, was an impromptu."
To capture three villages and eleven lines of the enemy's defences upon
a front 3-1/2 miles wide and nearly 1-1/2 deep, is pretty good. To take
a haul of nearly 6,000 prisoners out of their dug-outs and caves and
other quarters--that is not to be sneezed at either. But to organise
the territory that has been taken and to consolidate it, working night
and day under the constant fire of the enemy--that is perhaps a less
glorious business, but it is a thing more difficult to accomplish than
any attack.
For two long hours of the night my friend Ruffin, of the _Agence
Havas_, and I, conducted by our guide, the major, tramped it through
the trenches in order to reach those which lie under Beaumont. Steel
helmet on head, first-aid equipment and gas mask under arm, we went on
between the two walls of this roundabout road, our feet sticky with mud
and our eyes continually dazzled. Rockets soared into the air to burst
and then go out like those Roman candles which blossom into sprays of
slowly moving stars. One might have thought that some unseen juggler,
over there on the blazing skyline, was manipulating huge fiery plates.
The trenches were swarming with soldiers, the reliefs who were going
back to billets, and the reserves who were taking their places; the
sappers and pioneers, with their picks and shovels, who, protected by
the machine-guns, repair the shelters wherever they have given way;
the ambulance men and the stretcher-bearers; the grave diggers; the
supplying sections, who bring up the cases of grenades, before ever
they appear with food. This crowd of dim men, ten feet underground,
moved like a silent river.
One hardly thought of talking. To-night, when they are consolidating
the conquered positions, the opposing artilleries were engaged in a
terrific duel. The barrage fires of the Germans followed one another
every quarter of an hour, each one lasting seven minutes, and each
minute an eternity, when, every second, there fell not less than 100
shells. To protect those who were at work the English artillery set up
curtain fires, which smashed every preparation for a counter-attack.
Marmites, shells, shrapnel, hurtled from either side of the single line
which had been snatched from this Inferno.
An odd scent of roasted apples catches us by the throat; our eyes
begin to stream in a detestable fashion. "Look out for the acid drops!"
cries our major. We know this bit of soldiers' slang, which means the
lachrymatory shells. We quickly put on our masks. In perfect safety,
crouched against the wall of the trench, in the company of a hundred
unknown comrades, we wait until the poisonous gust of yellow smoke has
blown away. Through the eye-pieces of our masks everything seems to be
enveloped in some fabulous steam; the pale lightning of the guns, the
ghastly discs of the English rockets, the red stars of the German. But
one sound: the clatter of the machine-guns near us, a muffled thunder
as of a rising sea.
In this muddy ditch we are like some lost gang of divers.
And in the meantime, 100 yards ahead of us, in the midst of choking
gases and the tempest of the machine-guns, soldiers--heroes--have never
ceased their work.
They hammer nails, they drive in stakes, they sink piles, they knot
together into spider nets the tangled strands of the barbed wire. All
honour to them! These are the Supermen.
CHAPTER IV.
SURPRISES OF A MOONLIT FROSTY NIGHT.
A true Walpurgis Night of heroes and warriors. It is not on the summit
of the Brocken that I have witnessed it, but, looking out over the
plain of the Ancre, from a tree. This tree, every evening, is wreathed
with the fumes of asphyxiating shells. Its woolly streamers of shrapnel
smoke are like the foliage around a heraldic crown.
As soon as twilight is come, aeroplanes cross the neighbouring lines
and attack this tree with their machine-guns. It is treated like a
combatant. Herein, perhaps, lies the secret of its clumsy strength
and beauty. It stands upon its hill, solid and straight. It holds its
ground as few men could do. It is a French ash that stands upon the
field of battle in the very middle of the British Army.
It has become an observation post. One climbs it by a straight ladder
160 feet long. In its highest fork one of the engineers has made a
wooden box, bound together with barbed wire, with a little canvas to
hide it. Field-glasses, maps, range-finders are there. All the gusts
of the autumnal breeze blow through it. Up here, too, men are pitched
about as if they were in the mizzen-top of a cruiser. Strange nest for
war eagles!
"Perfect weather for flying," the major tells me.
A clear, frosty, moonlight night broods over the black distances of the
plain. The river and its swampy edges glisten like silver coins. No
sign of life. Only the guns, all round the horizon, roar beneath their
crests of lightning.
Imagine that after blinding yourself with a very tight and thick
bandage you suddenly open your eyes. Glowing discs, will o' the wisps,
haloes, flashing rainbows, a whole ballet of lights spins upon your
retina. Up here, that is the spectacle that each night brings. The
battlefield appears to be electrified. At one moment, sharp, stabbing
flashes, cold arrows of light. It is the English guns shelling the
enemy. The next, radiances which divide, spread out fanwise, or blossom
like flowers. They are German marmites or crapouillots.
The sounds of the guns intersect one another. They are hard and dry,
when some battery, near by, opens fire; dull, soft and muffled,
according as the distance becomes greater. A stroke upon a gong,
followed by a long metallic shriek, high in the air, announces a heavy
shell. After a hoarse scream a machine-gun begins to crackle, rending
both air and men.
It is all one vast intermittent hurly-burly, lightning flashing low
down, V-shaped sheaves of red fire. And all is, each time, unexpected,
cruelly inconsequent, magnificent and devastating.
Thousands of men are there, and thousands upon thousands, all over this
plain of the Ancre. There they lie, buried in their trenches, their
nerves like stretched wire, ready to spring forward on the instant.
From here we can see one of the last sectors to be conquered.
It is land over which the offensive has passed.
And our hearts ache as we remember that down there, near this swamp,
it is not even in ill-made trenches that the English sections are
keeping their watch, but, simply, in shell-holes, where the water lies
deep, holes whose sides have been hastily shored up--veritable human
hells.
The fireworks did not keep us waiting. About ten o'clock, a certain
unwonted nervousness becoming evident among the Germans, the two
English trenches of the first line let off a bouquet of rockets.
Balls of light, red, blue or green, climbed 90 feet into the air. For
a moment they rose, hesitatingly, like toy balloons at the end of
a string, then burst into stars or sheaves, lighting up, as with a
ghastly daylight, this neutral ground, this "no man's land," which the
scattered corpses of the patrols alone inhabit. After each flight of
rockets the guns came savagely to life, and, below our watch-tower,
even in greater numbers, even more furious, other batteries, and yet
others, proclaimed their presence. "Barrage!" one of the short-lived
fire-balls demanded over to the west. The firing increased, pounding
the sector from end to end. This light from fairyland, then, was
nothing but a cry for help! In a moment the Ancre and its swamps were
blushing.
The moon began to veil herself with small round clouds. "Watch out for
the aeroplanes," our staff-major told us again. In a quarter of an hour
his warning was justified.
The snarl of engines filled the milky spaces of the sky. Two squadrons
against two. The English searchlights found the enemy for a moment,
then lost him. Then from every crest and from smallest hollow the
anti-aircraft guns began their barrage. In the sky nothing could be
seen but the commas of flame and blazing curves, which marked where the
shrapnel and the shells had burst. The machine-guns chattered like an
applauding crowd.
A few planes succeeded in crossing the barrage. It was magic--of
another kind.
One, two, five incendiary bombs were thrown by the enemy. The eye
was dazzled as by a sudden appearance of the aurora-borealis. The
night became a ghastly day. Thick columns of smoke rose into the air,
then, half-way to the clouds, swelled up like the tops of palm-trees.
And thus they remained, twenty minutes after the explosion, without
dissolving, steady against the wind, turning themselves into canopies
and domes and a preposterous hedge of giant parasols.
One might have thought that some fabulous forest had just sprung up,
filled with domed palaces of fantastic shape.
A night very fruitful of surprises--barrages, rockets, anti-aircraft
firing, a battle of aeroplanes, incendiary bombs. Truly the Great Game,
this!
I left my watch-tower tree like a man who has saved his soul from the
black powers of sorcery.
CHAPTER V.
THE BATTLE REOPENS.
18th November.
The Battle of the Ancre, which for a moment had died down, began again
this morning, at dawn, with a new violence.
The English had only paused just long enough to oil the vast machine,
which has now resumed its regular, methodic movements; and the latest
news permits us to anticipate a fresh and substantial success.
The scene of these last events has been rather different from that
which witnessed the English advance of the 12th and 13th of November.
This, one may say in passing, proves the elasticity of the British
offensive.
If the eye travels, on the map, to the right, beyond the positions in
which the last battle was fought, it follows a line almost parallel
to the valley of the Ancre. To-night, then, the English, not pursuing
this theoretically correct line, inclined their front slightly to the
South, to the centre of a line drawn between Thiepval and Le Sars. This
re-entering angle formed an obvious obstacle to the domination of the
Ancre valley upon the whole of this part of the British front. For this
reason General Sir Douglas Haig decided to abolish it.
Hence the movement of this morning.
The attack was elaborately prepared, and with the utmost secrecy, and
was launched at dawn.
At the moment of writing this telegram the reports that are coming in
from the scene of action show that the operation is being carried out,
within the limits assigned, very successfully. To employ an expression
coined by one of their own number, the Boche prisoners are "pouring" to
the rear.
This morning the weather, so fine during the last three days, was
extremely unfavourable to any movement of troops. There had been heavy
snow during the night, and for the first time this winter our Allies
fought in the snow. About 8 o'clock, the temperature having risen, a
thaw set in. After that it was in foul mud that they did their fighting.
In order to understand properly the British manoeuvres on the two banks
of the Ancre, we must remark that yesterday, the 17th of November, the
English had executed a movement which obviously aimed at assisting
to-day's operations.
Shortly, by outflanking the village of Beaucourt to the East, they
had carried their foremost positions, by yesterday evening, as far as
the little wood of Hollande. Now it is clear that any advance in this
direction seriously menaces Grandcourt and those positions on the north
bank of the Ancre, which the British troops attacked this morning.
A superior staff-officer remarked lately in my hearing that the German
line, throughout the recent fighting, has exhibited points of varying
strength. He attributed this circumstance to the work of the English
artillery. The resistance which the enemy had been able to offer had
varied directly with the effectiveness of the English gunfire.
It is also noticeable that the German losses in killed, prisoners and
missing are considerably greater than the corresponding losses among
the English. This result is apparently due to the fact either that the
Germans surrender more readily than the English, or that the British
artillery causes the enemy to sustain the heavier damage in dead and
wounded, or else finally that, unlike the English, the Germans do not
include their lightly wounded in the total of their losses.
Whatever the causes may be, that the issue of this battle has been
disastrous for the Germans becomes daily more evident. It appears now
that they are thinking of shortening their line where it is opposed to
the British Army between Puisieux-les-Monts and Grandcourt. Under the
increasing pressure of our Allies, the Germans, who are convinced that
Grandcourt must soon fall, are entrenching themselves with feverish
haste upon a new line, which unites Puisieux with Miraumont.
The enemy, using Puisieux as the pivot of his retiring movement, would
thus describe an angle whose depth, from Puisieux to the Ancre, is
about 2 miles, and whose width, between Grandcourt and Miraumont, is
about 1-1/4 miles.
It is possible, however, that the British offensive may to some extent
disorganise the beautiful and geometric symmetry of this new "strategic
retreat" of the Germans.
[Illustration: 3. THE ANCRE VALLEY.]
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE EDGE OF THE FRAY.
19th November.
Yesterday was a good day for the English. Our friends were successful
on nearly the whole front which they attacked. The only difficulty
which they encountered--and this was not serious--was on their left
centre; that is to say, to the South of Grandcourt. Thereabouts the
ground favoured the defence, for it is cut up into a number of deep
gorges, where the Boches had constructed redoubts and "nests" of
machine-guns.
But, on the other hand, the Canadians did wonders on the left, pushing
their patrols right up to the Western outskirts of Grandcourt.
The advance of the British troops on the North bank of the Ancre to the
East of Beaucourt has caused the fortified village of Grandcourt to be
menaced on more than one side.
They say that yesterday the German artillery made a very weak reply to
the fire of the British guns. This is certainly not due to any shortage
of material or ammunition suffered by Prince Rupert in this quarter.
It is well known, on the contrary, that he has concentrated against
the English an enormous quantity of these things. This weakness of the
German reply must be due either to the destructive precision of the
British fire, or to the formation of that line of resistance, about
which I told you yesterday, in the rear of the present front.
The German prisoners who have been taken during the day say that the
Boches suffered comparatively little damage, during the attack, from
the British fire, since they were in dug-outs of great strength and
depth. But when the infantry arrived they found themselves hemmed
helplessly in on all sides, and were forced to surrender _en masse_.
The same prisoners cannot sufficiently praise the performance of
the tanks, about which they speak with a kind of awful admiration.
They always use the same word when they describe these armour-plated
monsters: "Marvellous! Marvellous!"
They say that the German troops in the first line are well enough fed,
but that as soon as they go into reserve or are given a rest their diet
is at once restricted.
EPILOGUE.
THE CHARNEL-HOUSE.
19th November. Evening.
On this November Sabbath the belfries of Contay, Warloy, Senlis and a
dozen other villages of Picardy are sending forth through the fog their
regular summons to vespers. It is very cold, and the snow which fell
the other night has become foul mud, in which men, beasts and wagons
flounder and splash.
The Tommies in their quarters have made a rather more careful toilet
than usual, and are now gathered, in some neighbouring field or under
some shed out of which a church has been improvised, to listen to the
words of their chaplains. Peace, it would seem, reigns everywhere.
Only, alas! in appearance. For overpowering the voices of priests
and sound of bells the guns begin their booming out a few paces away.
Peace has not dwelt, this many a day, either in Englebelmer or in
Mesnil, which offer to the eyes of the passer-by the spectacle of
their desolated ruins, their silent belfries, their indescribable
sadness. Nor does Peace dwell, assuredly, on this battlefield where
you see these quagmires, these dead, bare fields that, one would say,
have been trampled by generations of men; these deserted trenches that
have fallen in here and there; these networks of barbed wire, to-day,
happily, no longer of any service; these shattered wagons, these
rusting weapons; these gun shelters which dart lightning; these parks
of munitions and materials; these strayed horses; these lines of muddy,
brooding men--in a word, all this wretchedness--and, over all, covering
everything as with a veil, this sky that seems heavy with threats, with
_hostility_.
Yet, before the war, few of the countrysides of France can have
breathed a more sweet and perfect spirit of peace. A soldier who was
here last spring, before ever men had come hither to destroy one
another, told me of the delight which he took in this pleasant corner
of Picardy. "It was," he said, "a landscape by Claude Lorraine."
We were halted at the head of a small valley which runs easily
downwards, near Mesine, towards the Ancre, and we were looking out
across the country. At our feet the river, coming from the East, turned
in a gentle curve towards the South, and was lost to sight in the
direction of Avelun and Albert. The stream, considerably swollen by the
recent rains, wound slowly between marshes and flooded fields.
The tall poplars of the valley, stripped of their leaves as much
by the bullets as by the rough weather, moved gently in the breeze.
Yesterday a dozen villages saw themselves reflected in the Ancre,
and clothed the neighbourhood of the river with a share of their
own prosperity. They were, among others, Mesnil, Hamel, Beaumont
and Miraumont on the North bank. Thiepval, Saint Pierre-Divion and
Grandcourt on the South. But the same devices of man that have
massacred the trees of the valley and stripped Thiepval of its forest,
have levelled these fortress-villages with the ground, and it is in
vain that to-day we may hope to distinguish them from the rest of
this dismal country. Even as we looked, the shells of the opposing
artilleries blotted out the last traces of Grandcourt. The guns, for
ever the guns! They are the only sign of life in all this land of Death.
The little cemetery at Hamel, which we passed on our road, was not
likely to dissipate these gloomy thoughts. In what a condition the
battle has left it! It lay, unfortunately for itself, just between the
two lines, English and German. But, indeed, it is no more and no less
sad a sight than all that surrounds it; no more, no less than Beaumont;
no more, no less than Beaucourt, to which we have now come.
A little in front of Beaucourt is a small hill, a sort of spur, lying
towards the South-west. On the morning of the 13th of November it
faced precisely in the direction whence the British attack was about
to be launched. Even in its present state one can, from the lie of the
ground and from the débris which is found scattered everywhere about,
form some faint idea of what the Boches had made out of this natural
fortress.
The British infantry, however, never hesitated a moment to storm the
place, and their impetuosity was such that in 18 minutes it was in
their hands.
If you do not know the price at which the English, like ourselves,
bought this victory, go out upon this advanced work of Beaucourt.
Take your courage in both hands and look about you. See there that
group of fallen soldiers, the glorious victors of the Ancre, who lie
still untouched, by the side of the Boches whom they have dragged
down with them to death, after hand-to-hand struggles that no words
may describe. Looking like pilgrims clothed in homespun, the English
stretcher-bearers, now grave-diggers, "tidy up" the field of battle.
Poor and dear Tommies! They have fallen with their faces to the German
trench. They fought with their heads, as do ours, for there is not a
shell-hole of which they have not taken advantage during their advance
against their enemy. They have fought, also, like lions, since they
have gained the victory.
One of them, a great, athletic-looking fellow with black hair, has
fallen head forwards into a shell-hole. His poor, shattered body is
drained of blood, but his face is a fiery red, as if his rage had risen
there as he died.
Another, of slighter, more fragile frame, lies on his back, his legs
apart, with a ball through his forehead. Close beside him are the bomb
which he was about to throw and a tiny French-English dictionary. May
we not say that he has witnessed with his blood to the friendship of
two great nations?
Beside another, who has been hideously wounded, the wind turns over the
leaves of a soldier's Bible.
But enough! My eyes can bear no more. And I hasten away from this
scene, over which, like the sound of mighty organs, the great guns
chant their huge and terrible chorus.
To free ourselves from this nightmare we went to visit the gunners in
their shelters. It was three in the afternoon, and we had only just
discovered that we had not yet lunched. A big fellow, who chattered
like a magpie and was built like a Hercules, lit two candles for us,
stirred the fire which was crackling in an earthen stove, spread a
newspaper for our table-cloth, and offered us a seat on a case of
jam-jars. Our sandwiches seemed delicious; our tea, the best in the
world; our hovel, a palace; our candles, an illumination.
A joy, hitherto unknown, in being merely alive gave a priceless quality
to the smallest pleasures of existence. We listened with the most
intense interest and an unaccustomed delight to the talkative soldier,
while he instructed us about the price of sugar in England.
Meanwhile, his battery, just beside us, went on killing Germans.
The spirit of Dickens hovered over that wretched hut.
Suddenly I noticed that my companion had fallen into a brown study, and
I fancied that he was back upon that hill by Beaucourt. "Come, come!" I
said. "What are you thinking about now?"
"I am thinking," the Englishman replied, "that we are bound to avoid
war if we can, but that when war comes we are bound to meet it like
men."
[Illustration: 4. A FRANCO BRITISH RELIEF.]
PART II.
THE SQUARE JAWS.
CHAPTER I.
THE WELDING OF FRENCH AND BRITISH.
Not all things can be welded together. There are metals which are
wholly unsympathetic, and even for those which are not we require the
services of the plumber and his solder.
It is the glory and the good fortune of the British and French Armies
that, from the first day of the war, they have shown themselves
fitted--and eager--to become one; and that they have discovered, to
this end (and continue daily to employ them), plumbers of the first
class and lead in abundance.
Let us understand one another. To say "joining," "soldering," is not
to say "fusion," and the theory of united action upon a united front
does not necessarily imply that out of two friends a single individual
is wrought. A _poilu_ might say that it is possible to be very good
comrades without sleeping in the same bed.
For Germany such fusion would have been a danger, and she has always
avoided it. Although she has carried her partnership with her allies
to the length of making them her slaves, she has been very careful to
allow nothing like a mingling of breeds in the forces which are at her
disposal. The German Army has, for instance, resisted every temptation
to admit into its ranks any of its Austrian friends. For it believes
that it is possible to be too friendly.
Germany has confined herself, where this is in question, to giving her
weakened allies no more help than can be obtained from her officers,
commissioned and non-commissioned, or from the specialised activities
of her artillery and engineers. Beyond this she has but one thought--at
any cost to insure unity of action between her forces and those of her
allies.
From this it follows that to bring about a real fusion of two or more
allied armies upon one front is a tactical achievement of the first
importance. Such a fusion--the essential condition of all united effort
that is to possess a real value--becomes, from its very nature, the
principal object of the enemy's attack. The history of this war shows,
if one may say so, nothing but a series of attempts, upon one side or
the other, to prevent or destroy the cohesion of the opposing forces.
(Mons; the first and second Battles of Ypres; the Russian-Rumanian
Armies and the Army of the East; the junction of the Italians near
Vallona with the Army of Salonika, etc.) But it is not enough that this
fusion should exist. It is also vital--as we shall presently see in the
case of the Franco-British forces--that it should be both elastic and
solid.
Since it is agreed that in war-time each month counts as a year, we
may say that it is now two months since the French and British Armies
celebrated their silver wedding. Age has weakened neither the strength
nor the love of the partners to this marriage. We can say confidently
that, since the day when "the contemptible little Army of General
French" first shook hands with our _pioupious_, the friendship has
never been interrupted. For all his passionate desire to accomplish
the destruction of the bond which the two countries have willingly
exchanged for their individual liberty, the enemy's efforts have been
fruitless.
Even during the gloomy days of the retreat from Mons and Charleroi
the union of the two Armies remained unimpaired. While one of them,
overwhelmed by numbers, found itself compelled to retire, the other,
without any proper understanding of the reason, and with no thought
for anything but the maintenance of the connection, complied at once
with the manoeuvre, though not without exacting a heavy toll from its
enemies.
A few days later the victory of the Marne was to reward these mutual
sacrifices for the common cause.
A cloud had passed. Others followed. Again and again the enemy, furious
at the perfect understanding which existed between his opponents and
dreading what the consequences of it might be to himself, determined
to make an end of it. The two battles of Ypres were the fruit of this
resolution, to shatter the unity of the French and British Armies.
For one moment they believed that they had succeeded.
This was on the 24th April, 1915, when, by the use of asphyxiating gas,
till then unknown to us, they had driven in one corner of the Ypres
salient. We know that it was the gallantry of the Canadians that saved
the day and closed the opening breach.
Since then the chain has never been weakened. Nay, in the North it has
never been so much as stretched.
This, however, has not been the case with the connection between the
British Army and the main body of the Armies of France. The continual
addition of new units to the British forces was bound to cause frequent
changes, here, in the geographical distribution of the adjoining
troops. Can France ever forget the day when she learned that silently,
without a hitch, and under the very noses of the Germans, the British
front had suddenly been extended from Loos to the Somme? A mother who
meets, after years, the son whom she has last seen as a child, must
feel a surprise not unlike that with which France discovered that
the Armies of her Allies had become so large. Who knows but that we
may soon be again delighted in the same way? I say "delighted," not
"surprised," for our Allies have taught us to forget to be astonished
by anything they may do.
And so, every time that the British front is extended, this elasticity
of the fusion of the Armies is to be observed.
It is clear that these rearrangements can in no way affect its
solidity, since it is this very fusion which has made possible not only
the terrific offensive of the 1st July last, but also its uninterrupted
prosecution.
Only a very happy combination of circumstances could have brought about
this miracle--for it is one--which to explain is to show that it must
last as long as the war shall go on.
First of all, it is due to the perfect understanding which exists
between the General Staffs of the two Allied Armies. It is, indeed,
an achievement to set men of different races, if of equal courage,
side by side. But this is not enough. Much more need is there of a
unity of command which shall see that the best use is made of all
this determination, brought together from sources so widely sundered,
so that the utmost measure of mutual support and cohesion may result
from the efforts of units which, though they work alongside of one
another, are strangers. Now it is this very thing which is evident
in the combined operations of the British and French Armies, at all
times and particularly since the opening of the offensive in Picardy.
The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, and General Foch--whom one
may perhaps describe as the keystone of the combination--have shown
themselves, in this connection, to be as good psychologists as they are
tacticians.
The troops of neither nation--and this should be made very clear--have
in any case experienced the smallest embarrassment in following out
the commands of their leaders. Whenever either English or French have
been able to give one another any kind of support, they have done it
faithfully and readily. The "fusion" is not a thing of maps; it is not
to be found in this place or that; it is a spiritual verity.
Living side by side, dying under one another's eyes, English and
French are acquiring a mutual respect and confidence which cannot fail
to strengthen their fighting power.
[Illustration: 5. GENERAL BIRDWOOD TALKING TO A GROUP OF BIG
AUSTRALIANS.]
"After all the proofs of their resolution and intrepidity," wrote
Field-Marshal French in a report, of June, 1915, upon the gas attacks,
"which our valiant Allies have given throughout the campaign, it is
quite unnecessary for me to dwell upon this incident, and I will only
express my firm conviction that if there are any troops on earth who
could have held their trenches in the face of an attack as treacherous
as it was unforeseen, it is the French divisions that would have done
it."
Which is the more admirable--the General who speaks of his Allies in
such generous terms, or the soldiers who inspired such words?
CHAPTER II.
HOW THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINGENT VOTED IN FRANCE IN FACE OF THE ENEMY.
8th December, 1916.
What Frenchman has not met, at least once, in Paris or some other of
our large towns, one of these stout lads who wear the uniform and carry
the equipment of the British soldier, but are to be distinguished from
him by that khaki-coloured, broad-brimmed felt hat, which the Boers
have immortalised?
Of a height generally above that of the average Frenchman, with broad
shoulders, an alert glance, a free and easy air; a skin that is often
tanned; a horseman from boyhood, slow to tire, reckless in battles and
of a hot temper--such is the Australian soldier, one of the world's
foremost fighting men.
His courage, which the enemy regards with a peculiar distaste, has
earned him heavy fighting everywhere throughout the war. Let us recall,
shortly, some of his chief performances.
The first division sent by Australia to the assistance of the Mother
Country towards the end of 1914 was employed on the defences of Egypt
and the Suez Canal. These sterling horsemen did splendid work in this
field of operations, and for four months lived in the desert, exposed
to continual attack.
Next, the Australian troops, augmented by certain units of New
Zealanders, disembarked on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the left of their
English comrades. Hardly were they on shore before they began a series
of battles which never stopped for a week. They held, at very great
cost, the bit of ground which had been taken from the Turks, and during
four months two divisions of them lived, Heaven knows how, on a space
of less than a third of an acre.
Then came the Evacuation of Gallipoli. The Australians returned to
Egypt, there to rest between December, 1915, and the 1st of April,
1916, on which day they made their appearance on the Western front.
Since that time the Australians have fought on French soil.
They have to thank their splendid reputation that they are always to
be found wherever the most glory is to be won. It was they who took
Pozières, during the Somme offensive, and the farm at Mouquet, and
measured their strength, throughout those epic days, against that of
the Prussian Guard.
Such is the Army which, quite recently, has held its Elections under
the very guns of the Germans.
For this Army, whose valour is already almost legendary, is also
among the most democratic Armies of the world. No one is more jealous
of his independence than the Australian. If he loves and admires his
comrades-in-arms, the French _poilus_, it is, no doubt, because, having
long misunderstood them, after the fashion of strangers towards all
things French, he cannot to-day find words enough to do justice to
their military qualities and their unselfish courage. But it is also,
and, above all, because his heart goes out naturally to the French
people under arms, to this democracy which in so many ways resembles
his own country, Australia the Free. Like the French soldier, the
Australian loves his fun; like him, he is light-hearted, always
singing. And each of them glories in the knowledge that beneath his
soldier's uniform is a citizen and an elector of a noble country.
These reflections will help us to understand why the Australian
Government has been led to hold a referendum of its Expeditionary Force
in France.
As you know, the people of Australia were concerned with the business
of deciding for or against the introduction of compulsory military
service into their country. Mr. Hughes, the Premier of New South Wales,
who did France the honour to visit it at the beginning of this year,
was the originator of this referendum. The result, for reasons which
I will presently mention, was a majority against conscription for
Australia.
To enable the Australian contingent to vote was the simplest thing
in the world. Voting booths were prepared at Contay, a small village
between the Ancre and the Somme, close to the firing-line. As fast as
the sections left the trenches to go back into billets, each officer,
non-commissioned officer and man was given two voting papers. On one
the word "Yes" was printed; on the other, "No." The voting lasted a
month--the time between reliefs--at the end of which period about
100,000 papers had been collected in the ballot-boxes at Contay. It is
strange that the majority of the Australian contingent voted against
compulsory service for Australia.
Why?
Let no one imagine that it was because these heroes have become
opponents of the war; nor is it even because they think that their
country has done enough.
They have voted against compulsory service, first of all, for a reason
of a general nature, which applies to the whole of this body of
Australian electors--namely, because the Australians have a horror of
all moral compulsion and a burning love of liberty. These soldiers have
also been influenced by another objection: they fear lest to introduce
a professional Army into Australia may be to infect their nation with a
spirit of militarism which is not at all to their taste.
And the proof that the negative result of the referendum has in no
way weakened the determination of Australia to pursue the war to a
victorious end and in complete accord with the Mother Country, is
that, on the one hand, the Australian contingent persists, after, as
before, recording its vote, in splendidly performing its duty at the
front; and that, on the other hand, Australia continues to send to the
battlefields of Europe thousands of fresh volunteers.
Hurrah for Liberty! Down with the Boches! In this motto the quality of
the Australian troops is perfectly expressed. This quality one meets
with again in the war song, the species of _Marseillaise_, which the
Australians sing to-day when they are on the march in France.
Here are its words in full:
AUSTRALIA WILL BE THERE.
_1st Verse._
You've heard about the Emden
That was cruising all around,
Sinking British shipping
Where'er it could be found,
Till one bright Sunday morning
The Sydney came in sight--
The Emden said good night.
_Chorus._
Rally round the banner of your country,
Rally round the banner of your King.
On land or sea,
Wherever you be,
Keep your eye on Germany.
For England, home and beauty,
Have no cause to fear.
Should old acquaintance be forgot?
No, No--No, No, No.
Australia will be there,
Australia will be there.
_2nd Verse._
With Kitchener in our Army
And French in our cavalry fine,
You bet those German bandsmen
Are in for a lively time.
And there's Winston Churchill
To guide our Navy grand;
With this fine lot we'll make it hot
For the poor old Fatherland.
_Chorus._
_3rd Verse._
We don't forget South Africa
When England was at war;
Australian Light Horsemen, my boys,
Were always to the fore.
Archie Norris and Billy Cook
Have now all kissed the Book.
_Chorus._
CHAPTER III.
BOELCKE'S LAND OF PROMISE.
On the 28th of October, six Halberstadters and Aviatiks attacked two
English aviators in the neighbourhood of Pozières. During the fight six
fresh enemy machines came to the assistance of their friends. At the
end of five minutes of furious fighting two German machines collided.
Pieces of the machines fell, and one of them descended toward the East.
The fight lasted 15 minutes, at the end of which time all the enemy
machines were driven off.
It is probable that it was during this fight that Captain Boelcke was
killed. It was, in fact, at this date that the German wireless stated
that Boelcke had been killed owing to a collision in the air.
In a letter which he wrote to a friend a few days before his tragic and
still unaccountable death, Boelcke, the best-known and most successful
of the German aviators, said:
"The Somme front is a positive land of promise. The sky is filled with
English airmen."
Boelcke expressed, under the guise of a kind of sporting
self-congratulation, the astonishment of his fellows at the way in
which the British flying service had developed.
A large number of documents found upon German prisoners give evidence
of a no less striking kind upon the same point.
"Our air service," says one of them, "practically ceased to exist
during the Battle of the Somme. At times the sky seemed black with
enemy machines."
Another says:
"We are so inferior to our opponents in our air service that when
hostile machines fly over our own lines we have no recourse but to hide
ourselves in the earth. Now and then a few of our machines attempt to
go up, but it is only a drop in the bucket."
[Illustration: 6. A BRITISH AEROPLANE.]
Finally, for one must not pursue this subject too far, a General Order
has been issued to the German Army to the effect that when troops are
marching they must halt and take cover whenever a British machine
is known to be in their vicinity; for the English are in the habit
of flying sufficiently low over the invaded territory to use their
machine-guns against moving troops and convoys.
To this evidence from enemy sources I may perhaps add my own. I assert,
then, as definitely as it is possible to do it, that one of my most
agreeable surprises, during my visit to the British front, was the
discovery of the great numbers and unceasing activity of the British
aeroplanes. Whether I was in the firing-line or behind it, my attention
was being constantly drawn to the movements of the British air service.
On the 15th of September the total number of hours during which flying
was carried on upon the British front was 1,300. Reckoning that each
aviator flies, on an average, for two hours, it is possible to form an
idea of the number of machines which were in the air on that day.
During the last Battle of the Ancre the British planes of every kind,
for bombing, fighting and directing the gunfire, seemed always to be
over the German lines; and on one fairly still day I was able to count
as many as 30 of them in the air at once, and this on a comparatively
narrow sector.
Behind the lines I went to see numerous aviation camps, instruction
camps, depôts of munitions, etc. They were like so many beehives,
models of organisation, order and method. The pilots, the observers,
the mechanics, everyone, seen at close quarters, gave me an impression
of a very unusual power and intelligence, and inspired me with the same
confidence with which their own mastery of the air has so long filled
them, ever since, indeed, they wrested it from the enemy.
Perhaps it may not be labour lost if, in order to get a right
understanding of the present very satisfactory and praiseworthy
position, we review shortly the history of British military aviation
since the beginning of the war.
England had not wished for war, nor had she prepared for it, and while
aviation seemed to her a marvellous achievement of the human brain, she
was far from thinking that she was bound to make use of it in order to
injure mankind. This is why her military air service, like her whole
Army, was in no more than an embryonic condition when she found herself
faced with the grim reality of this war.
Far more than the exigencies of the campaign on the continent, it was
the repeated raids of the Zeppelins over England which caused her to
devote herself to the development of her aviation.
The undertaking bristled with difficulties. We should be wrong, were we
in France, to suppose that we are the only people the story of whose
aviation has been marked by crises. Our Allies, though their practical
nature is proverbial among us, were forced to experiment and grope
their way for a long time before they could arrive at a solution of the
many knotty problems of aerial defence.
A complete lack of any central authority, a division or responsibility
between the various staffs, nobody to decide as to how machines should
be employed or how built, waste of every kind--the English have
experienced all these troubles. But how admirably they have surmounted
them! The proof is that now the only resource of the Germans is a
servile imitation.
This spirit of imitation among the Germans has shown itself most
markedly in these last weeks, during the process of the Battle of the
Ancre. The Germans set out by collecting a large number of aeroplanes
on a very narrow front. Then they began to show some signs of taking
the initiative with a daring to which we were little accustomed.
Did they really hope to wrest the mastery of the air from the English?
I do not know. In any case their attempt began badly; for when, 40 in
number, they met 30 of the British machines, they could discover no
better way of saving themselves than by flight, after a quarter of
their number had been put out of action.
It was about this time that General von Groener, a man of energy and
resolution, called upon the German aeroplane factories to increase
their output; and that Mr. Lloyd George in England, while giving
publicity to this new effort of Germany, exhorted his fellow-countrymen
not to allow themselves to be overtaken by their enemy.
Boelcke may rest in peace. His land of promise can only grow greater
and breed birds more rapidly.
After this, what need one say more of the technical skill and the often
heroic courage of the British aviator?
The French and British airmen form, indeed, one great family of heroes,
and our men have, in King George's Army, cousins who are as like them
as brothers.
At this point I will do no more than offer for your consideration a
document and a story.
The document is a letter, sent from Germany to his friends by an
English aviator, Lieutenant Tudor-Hart, on the 25th of this July. I
should blame myself were I to alter one word of it.
"I was," he writes, "with Captain Webb at between 12,000 and 15,000
feet above the German lines, when we saw eight German machines coming
towards us from the South-west. They were higher than we were, and we
went towards them to attack them. Two of them passed about 300 yards
above our heads. I opened fire on one and they replied together.
"I signed to Webb to turn so that I might fire at the other machine,
behind us; but he made a spurt forward with the machine. I looked
round to see what had happened, but Webb pointed to his stomach and
fell forward upon the controls. I fancy he must have died almost
immediately. His last thought had been to save the machine.
"It at once began to swing in the direction of the German lines, and I
was compelled to return to my machine-gun, in order to fire on a plane
which was getting too close. The other machines never stopped firing at
us. My only hope was to make for our lines, but I could not manage to
push Webb out of the pilot's seat, and I was obliged to manoeuvre above
the hood.
"I had to fire so often that it became impossible for me to guide the
machine. At last, constantly under fire, I planed down towards a field
near by and tried to land. I saw a number of men with rifles, and I
thought that I might be killed before being able to set the machine on
fire.
"One wing having struck the earth, the machine was smashed, and I was
thrown out. I got off with one side paralysed, one ankle and one rib
broken. I was very well treated, and the German flying men behaved
towards me like sportsmen and gentlemen."
It is in this way that the paladins of this war both conduct and
express themselves.
And now for the story.
There was once in England a rich man who interested himself in Art and
Politics. His name was Lord Lucas. Life had always smiled upon him, and
he had returned her smile. Had he wished it, he might have spent his
life in slippered ease and lived from day to day without a care.
Choosing, rather, to become a soldier, he joined the Expeditionary
Forces during the South African War. He was wounded and lost a leg, but
this in no way deterred him from being of service to his country.
When the European War broke out, Lord Lucas was the Minister for
Agriculture in the Asquith Cabinet.
He felt shame to be engaged in such a vapid business as Politics now
appeared, and he resigned. Next we find him volunteering for the
British air service. In spite of his artificial leg, he went through
his training, was hurt, got cured, and returned to his work and never
rested until he had flown over the German lines. One day Lord Lucas,
millionaire, artist, ex-Cabinet Minister, and, above all, soldier,
failed to return to his squadron. The Boches alone know whether he is
dead or a prisoner.
The man who told me the story of this splendid life was the best friend
of Lord Lucas, and he was worthy to be it. I asked this soldier, a peer
himself and himself wounded, if in England, as in France, commissions
in the air service were much sought after. In reply, he pointed to two
great birds, and said: "We admire them, Monsieur, as you do, and, like
you, we envy them."
CHAPTER IV.
THE SQUARE JAW.[A]
[A] Of the two articles which follow, the first ("The Square Jaw")
was written on the 9th of December, during the crisis caused by the
successive resignations of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith.
The second ("The Moral of the British Armies") was written on the 19th
of the same month, the day after Germany made her official offer of
peace.
The British soldier does not concern himself with Politics. It is not
in his character to do so; moreover, any such conduct is against the
rules of his profession. And so, since discipline "is the first weapon
of Armies," the British soldier respects it above everything else.
The Englishman has a passion and a profound respect for method.
Method requires that Politics should be the business of Ministers and
Politicians, and that war should be carried on by soldiers. Method,
says the Englishman, demands that everyone should stick to his own work
and his own place. Without this, anarchy must ensue. Now there cannot
well be anything less anarchical than the British Army.
It is their order and discipline which most powerfully and most quickly
impress the Frenchman who is permitted to live for a time among the
Armies of England. These qualities, let me hasten to add, are also the
least superficial, and thus afford the surest test of the value of
these Armies.
Observe that it is not by collecting together a body of indifferent
natures, passive temperaments and personalities more or less
irresponsible, that this order and discipline have been infused into
the British Army. The level of capacity of this Army is, moreover, by
no means a low one; for it is one of the most intelligent Armies in
Europe or in the whole world. The common soldier is not of one class,
to the exclusion of all others. He does not represent one section only
of British opinion. His corporate mind is therefore in no way a limited
one.
As a volunteer, he thronged into England, at the beginning of the war,
from every quarter of the globe, and by this voluntary act at once
proclaimed his intelligence. To-day, as a conscript, he represents,
more than ever before, the completeness of his country's will.
As for the officers, who differ from our own in their essentially
aristocratic character, in them we see the direct expression of all
those qualities of brain and heart which distinguish the leading
elements of British society.
And so, if this army does not concern itself with Politics, if it is
thoroughly disciplined, if it contents itself with "making war," it is
because it prefers to do these things.
It is, moreover, excellently informed of everything which happens
outside itself, whether in England or elsewhere, and in this respect
differs considerably from the German Army which lies beyond its
trenches. A Boche prisoner, recently taken, owned that neither the
newspapers of his country nor any letters ever reached the German
troops in the front lines. As each day comes, its history is told to
our enemies by word of mouth only; that is to say, after the fashion
which best suits their rulers.
Among the English there is very little heard or said about peace, or
about the objects for which they are fighting; but they read, and they
read continually. The soldier follows the course of events as well in
his letters as in his newspaper.
And in what does his knowledge consist? What does he know?
He knows that the Army to which he belongs owes much to that French
Army which he admires so deeply, and by whose side he is proud to fight
for the interests which their natures share. He knows that to the
British Army is secured, from now onwards, one of the chief factors of
invincible and victorious strength--numbers. He knows approximately
the number of his effectives, and he would gladly, by crying it aloud,
shake the confidence of the enemy and confirm that of his friends.
He knows also that the second factor of his strength--material--while
it is already considerable and probably equal to that which his
opponents possess--does not represent a quarter of what the coming year
will produce. He knows, from having done it again and again since July,
that not only can he resist the enemy, but defeat him; and he awaits
confidently the hour of triumph.
Hence his firm, his unshakable determination to obtain victory on
his own terms; hence, also, it follows that no thought or hope of a
premature peace ever disturbs his mind.
And if no one else remained to fight, he would go on, for--he says it
himself, and one cannot but believe him--he has "a square jaw."
It is important, in the present condition of affairs, that the French
public should make no mistake as to the opinions of the British soldier
concerning the war and its sure conclusion.
About this no one can be under any delusion. Everywhere on the British
front there is but one opinion--that the war must be carried through to
the end; that is to say, till the inevitable victory of the Allies has
come to pass; and that it would be a crime against the Homeland, the
Allies and those comrades who have fallen, to listen to proposals for
a peace which would be consistent with neither the intentions nor the
interests of England and her Allies.
During my visit of two months I have seen the larger part of the
British front from the Somme to the Yser. Everywhere I have met with
the same spirit of determination. This state of mind may be explained
in various ways; the perfect confidence which the British Army feels in
its Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, "the lucky," as the soldiers
call him; the regular growth in the numbers of the effectives, which,
though I may not disclose these figures, exceed the estimates of them
usually made in France; the tremendous development of material and in
the output of munitions; the magnificent successes gained on the Somme
and the Ancre, which have given rise to the certainty of being able to
defeat an enemy formerly said to be invincible; etc., etc.
Without doubt, the war goes slowly. Tommy admits it, but he begs you to
observe--and justly--that on every occasion when his infantry has come
to grips with the Germans it has invariably beaten them.
"Besides," he thinks, "perhaps it is not absolutely essential, in
order to win the war and place England and her Allies in a position
to dictate their own terms, that our Armies should hurl themselves
forward in one final and costly advance over the shattered lines of the
Germans." The British soldier is fond of comparing the Western battle
front to an immense boxing ring, of which the complex systems of barbed
wire which stretch from the North Sea to Belfort form the ropes. The
war, on the West, has been fought within these limits since the Marne.
It is possible that it will see no change of position up to the end.
[Illustration: 7. CANADIANS FRESH FROM THE TRENCHES.]
But, as in a boxing match, it is not necessary, in order to win,
to drive one's opponent over the ropes and out of the ring; in the
same way it may happen that the German Army is "knocked out" in the
positions where it is fighting to-day.
That, at least, is the opinion of the British soldier.
It is, indeed, no more than a paraphrase of that dictum, pronounced
not long ago by General Nogi, and as true of the ring as it is of war:
"Complete victory is to him who can last a quarter of an hour longer
than the other fellow."
Tommy has no intention--no more than has his friend the _poilu_--of
playing the part of "the other fellow."
CHAPTER V.
THE RELIEF.
The scene is an old trench of the French first line. It is midday. It
is raining. It goes on raining. It has always rained. The sector is
fairly quiet, and has been for an hour or so. Tommy sees a chance to
write a letter.
Here in his dug-out--a miserable shelter which oozes water
everywhere--squatted on the straw that becomes filth the moment it
is thrown down, he is telling his friends in Scotland all his small
sorrows and hopes; he is wishing them "A Happy New Year."
Suddenly his pen falters; the writer considers, stops writing, and,
addressing the second-lieutenant as he goes by: "Beg pardon, sir," he
asks, "may I say that they have moved out?"
"Certainly not," says the lieutenant, apparently horrified by such
a question. "It is absolutely forbidden to say anything about this
business. Do you understand, all of you?"
"But--but," someone ventures to say, "everyone in England knows
about it already. The papers ..." and they show the lieutenant some
newspapers which have come that morning. The officer takes them,
glances at them, smiles, and says: "Oh, these journalists!"
On the front page of the paper a striking photograph is exhibited,
showing an incident of the taking over by the British of the French
front. Underneath is the following description:
"Tommy takes over the French trenches. French soldiers looking on at
the arrival of British troops who are relieving them. This important
operation took place at the front, at Christmas-time, silently,
secretly and with complete success. The enemy, who was in many places
no more than a few yards distant, never had any suspicion of this
change, which has greatly extended the British lines and eased the
strain which our gallant Allies have endured upon the Western front.
"This military manoeuvre affords the best reply to the manoeuvres of
Germany in the direction of peace."
And so Tommy continues his letter in some such fashion as this:
"Now that the thing is done, I may tell you that we have left the
sector of ---- in order to come down farther South, where we have
relieved the French. It has been a fine chance to see our brave Allies
at work, and I am tremendously proud to have taken their place in the
lines.
"The thing has been done very well, although it wanted a lot of care
and was very dangerous. You can imagine that if the Boches had had any
notion of what we were at, they would not have failed to do their level
best to stop us or make it difficult for us; for it must make them
very savage to see our 'contemptible little Army' always extending its
flanks, without wearing thin anywhere, and so setting free first-rate
troops for the French to use elsewhere.
"We came among the Frenchmen on Christmas Day.
"The roads were all as busy as on the day before the offensive on the
Ancre in front of Beaumont-Hamel. We never stopped meeting French
troops and wagons, which were going back towards the railway.
"We exchanged civilities with the _poilus_ which neither they nor we
understood the least bit. But I may tell you that it was pretty clear
to me that they were not sorry to be giving up their places to us.
"On the 25th of December, after supper, we left our last camp and
marched through the night for many hours, till we came to this French
trench where I am writing to you now.
"The _poilus_ were at their posts. It'll be a long time before I forget
that sight.
"Although they were far dirtier and more tired than were we, the
French, as they themselves say, 'had the smile.' If we had been allowed
to make any noise, we should have cheered them. But we were only 38
yards from the Boche line.
"The officers and the non-commissioned officers gave the orders in
whispers. They had interpreters to help them.
"As for me, I was at once told off to do sentry in the place of a great
French chap, with a beard, who was a good 15 years older than I.
"As I understood a bit of French, I was able to make out most of what
he said to me.
"'Good evening, my lad,' says he. 'You're a good fellow to come and
let me out of this. Shake hands, won't you?'--I didn't understand
everything; French is so difficult--and he added: 'And now, young 'un,
open your eyes and keep them skinned.'
"Then he gave me a great deal of very sound advice, showing me in which
directions I must keep a good look-out, and telling me to have a care
of a blackguardly German machine-gun which never has done sweeping
their parapet.
"When he had finished with this he took his rifle out of the loophole,
and I put mine there in its place. And that's how the big relief was
carried out on Christmas night."
At this point Tommy was forced to interrupt his long letter, for the
Germans had at last got news of the relief and were attacking the
sector. In vain.
Next day Tommy finished thus:
"My _poilu_ was right. This corner can hardly be called a quiet one,
and Fritz is a bad boy, there's no doubt about it. Thanks for your
Christmas parcel. The pudding was A1. Good-bye.
"TOMMY."
PART III.
THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH.
Flat calm on both sides of the Ancre; calm--or something like it--on
the Somme. Let us take advantage of this apparent truce to get into
rather closer touch with the British Army.
By this eight-day tour (though it has seemed, while we have been making
it, a kind of intermezzo between two acts of the offensive) we had
intended, particularly, to demonstrate to ourselves, by our study of
the events and those who have enacted them, the dauntless determination
with which our Allies, not satisfied to defend the heroic heritage
which these battlefields of 1915 have bequeathed to them, now prepare
for the future.
In telling these experiences, one has to play the Censor over oneself.
And so we may say nothing of the most important things of all.
Everywhere throughout this countryside mighty Armies, in the most
perfect secrecy, are doing their business, scattering, with prodigal
hand, the seed of future victory. And the harvest will surely be
gathered. And if, at this time of heart-breaking uncertainty, our
journey enables us to do no more than declare that great things
are assuredly preparing, this alone will make it worth our having
undertaken it.
We did not set out, we three, with our permits from the General
Headquarters, to make a sentimental pilgrimage over the battlefields
that lie between Lorette and the trenches of French Flanders. No; it
was a reconnaissance that we made--into the Future. These sketches of
the British Armies are, thus, no more than a study of latent forces.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREPARATION OF THE CANADIANS.
We spent the first two days among the Canadians. Let me recall a few of
their performances. They sustained, in front of Ypres, the first great
gas attack launched by the Germans. During the offensive in Picardy,
being sent into the front line on the 15th of September or thereabouts,
they stormed Courcelette and Martinpuich, and consolidated their
forward positions on one side towards Grandcourt, on the other towards
Le Sars. The rest of them kept the enemy contained.
To sum them up--an Army full of robust qualities, an Army of young
athletes, inured by their own home-life to the physical hardships of
the trenches, regardless alike of cold, fog and mud. An Army, too, of
formidable size, since to-day its numbers are greater than those of the
whole British Expeditionary Force of 1914.
We saw them in their lines--in camp. Our guides were certain young
officers from Quebec, who spoke an archaic, melodious French, that was
most pleasant to hear. Their names also sounded oddly in our ears; more
than one of them recalled the old sailor names of Cherbourg, Saint Malo
and Lorient. They told us what joy they found in fighting for their two
Homelands--England and France.
While we were crossing a wood near A----, one of them told me, gravely:
"I have been here since our good God made the little apples to grow,
but I have known neither regret nor weariness. Rather has this life in
France this springhead of my race, made me know myself each day more
truly."
These men and their leaders, indeed, do neither their training nor
their fighting from any other motive than duty. Their fighting has a
kind of mystical quality, the passion of a young people, which makes
them, behind their battle lines, a family of brothers, and, when they
engage, an army of warriors who will lay down their lives for one
another.
A few miles from the enemy, behind a redoubt, where thousands of French
graves lie scattered, one of their divisions occupied some huts which
our engineers had built. Almost everywhere the notices were written in
French. In one immense system there were trenches of a hundred shapes
all jumbled together. We saw, here, a demonstration of a surprise
attack against a machine-gun emplacement on a redoubt of the German
pattern. This manoeuvre was no more than an illustration of theory. The
captain who had charge of it had, during the previous night, himself
led an attack against the Germans. From it he had returned with three
things--a slight wound, two prisoners and the Military Cross.
Elsewhere, at the edge of a mine-crater, we listened to a lieutenant
grounding his men in the art of trench-digging. A trench should be made
irregularly, in accordance with the natural variations of the soil. All
of which the lieutenant summed up thus: "To do this job well you must
do it badly."
A company of Canadian gunners were practising with a trench-digging
machine, invented in England, which had done well on the Somme.
Suddenly one of them, to his horror, perceived that a shell which stood
among a hundred others was smoking. By some unaccountable means its
fuse had caught fire, the match was burning, and in a few seconds,
perhaps in one, the shell would burst. Were it to do so, the whole of
this store of ammunition must go aloft, with the gunners and us and all.
And so this gallant little Canadian who has seen the danger, gives the
alarm, and while we flatten ourselves into the mud, picks up the shell
in his plucky hands and throws it with all his strength out in front of
the battery, where it bursts--and no one a penny the worse.
We could have fallen, for very joy, upon the neck of the gallant lad
who had just saved all our lives. It would have been so silly to be
killed in such a fashion, miles away from the enemy!
Farther on they were learning to handle a new trench-mortar. We were
privileged to observe a little _barrage_ fire. It made a noble shindy
in the fog and a magnificent disturbance of the soil. These guns have
been only recently introduced, but they are installing great numbers of
them along the whole British front with a view to the winter campaign,
for they have been an immense success. The Germans, in this field, at
least, of experimental operations, have acquired this information at
considerable cost to themselves.
In the same way we followed the open-air training of the machine-gun
men. More or less every man has to go through it, so that if necessary
he may be able to do this work. It is the picked gunners, who have
shown what they can do in actual fighting, who teach the beginners the
use of this terrible weapon, and it is with a most entertaining air of
"the old soldier" that they give their instruction.
We saw the periscope rifles at work, the bomb-throwing and
grenade-throwing rifles and other strange and terrible weapons of which
one may not tell. What a rare museum we will be able to make up after
the war! The collections of arms from the Middle Ages will sink into
insignificance beside it. It would appear that for inventing ways of
killing his fellows, the imagination of Man knows no bounds.
We came upon some sturdy Canadians, their hats stuck in their belts. A
stout band of leather was round their heads. Slung across his shoulders
one carried two heavy boxes loaded with shells; another, without any
effort, carried one of his comrades. These exercises were explained to
us in this way. "It is the method of the Red Indians that the Canadians
have cleverly adapted to the purposes of supplying their trenches or
carrying their wounded. With it, one has no need to be a Hercules."
With this system, strength yields to skill. They showed us a man who
can in this way walk easily with a piano on his back. "It would come in
handy for shifting a broken-down tank!" said our guide with a grin.
Here we are at the Canadian Headquarters, an 18th-century château whose
walls are hung with early Flemish masters.
"France sends us welcome guests."
The man who gives us this genial reception is none other than General
Byng, Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian detachment in France. He is a
handsome fellow, slender, solidly built. In him an immense strength is
found united to an exquisite courtesy.
Hardly have we become his guests before he is showing his confidence in
us by permitting us to share in his secrets.
He has brought us in front of a huge map representing the field of
his operations. On it he shows us, with a most worthy pride, the
dispositions of all his divisions, brigades and battalions.
While we are chatting, an officer of the Intelligence comes in. He has
an unfortunate piece of news for the general, and so for us--the fall
of Bucharest.
"At dawn this morning," he says, "the Boches began cheering in their
trenches. Then they pushed up above their parapets placards which
told us that the Rumanian capital had been taken. Also, one of our
listening-posts got a German wireless put purposely into English, which
said: 'Bucharest is taken. Hurrah!'"
For a serious moment or two we are silent.
Then someone ventures: "That's a nuisance!"
Another silence. The square jaws set a little more firmly. Then: "Carry
on!" says our host.
CHAPTER II.
ARRAS, THE WOUNDED TOWN.
While I was in the British lines I visited Arras.
Everyone knows that since February of this year this ancient town has
been included in that part of the front which is held by our Allies.
Soldier or traveller, whoever enters the ruins of Arras, is subject to
the strictest regulations, which have been imposed for the sake of the
security of individuals and the preservation of the general order. The
steel helmet is obligatory, as is the gas mask.
Numerous notices instruct us "not to move about except upon the
footpaths and hugging the walls. It is absolutely forbidden to use the
middle of the roadway." A useful precaution in a town whose outskirts
are held by the Germans.
The town is divided into districts. On notice-boards are posted various
directions such as, "Rendezvous Place No. 1." For there is no longer
any Grande Place or Petit Place or any other spots whose names are
known to the people of Arras--only Place 1, 2, 3, and so on.
I have noted, in this connection, the following, as a novel example of
organisation and forethought:
"To civilians. You are not required to concern yourselves with military
matters. If you talk about such things, you may come under suspicion."
A civilian warned is a civilian armed.
Such was Arras when I saw it in November, 1914, after the first
bombardment, and so it was, or nearly so, when I saw it yesterday.
And it was the same sorrow that I felt as I passed along those empty
streets, where not one house is to be seen that has not received
its wound, more or less mortal. The dismal impression may have been
strengthened by yesterday's wretched weather.
[Illustration: 8. ARRAS.]
We often say of some provincial town: "It is a dead-alive place." The
phrase should be changed, or else it should be used henceforth only
about such towns as Arras, Ypres or Verdun.
For two years not only the Germans but the weather also have been
active to help the work of destruction; the Germans with their
never-ceasing bombardment, the weather by destroying without hope
buildings which might, till lately, have perhaps been saved. Everything
rusts and crumbles under the rain, and in many places the wind has
finished their work for the guns. Grass sprouts among the ruins; moss
grows on stone and timber. The work of Death goes on, slowly but surely.
It is not a little astonishing to meet civilians now and then in Arras.
Here and there the white head of some old man or woman appears from a
cellar or from behind a bit of wall. There are some hundreds of such
French people, who have refused to leave their homes.
They have sent away the "_jeunesse_," as they say, so that the Boches
may have no more children to kill. They, the old folk, propose to stay
and look after their ruins.
Yesterday I saw a woman come out of the half-open door of a little
shop. She may have been 65 years old. Over the door was the sign,
"Washing done here." She was a washerwoman.
I spoke to her.
"My dear lady," I said, "are you not afraid to stay here?"
"Bah, Monsieur!" she replied. "A little sooner, a little later. What
does it matter at my age?
"I had a grandson," she went on. "He was just 20 when the Boches
came. They killed him close by here in 1914. My girl died of grief.
The father is fighting somewhere or other. And so I came back. Here
at least I can go now and then to pray for my boy. But not beside his
grave. The Boches are _there_. That's where it is, Monsieur, on the
other side of the road."
And she pointed to where the enemy lay, close by.
He is there, close by. You feel him; you hear him. For two years he has
held the suburbs of Blangy, Ronville and Saint Sauveur. You hear his
firing as if it was beside you. It is all street fighting here. In one
place, indeed, there is no more than the width of a little street, four
or five yards, between the trenches.
For the moment, however, this sector is quiet.
The chief amusement of the Boches is incendiarism. On regular days and
at regular hours of the day it pleases them to light great bonfires in
the town. This is how they manage it.
First they throw a few incendiary bombs at the prey which they have
singled out. When the fire has been started and the firemen have come
running to fight it, the Boches enliven the situation with shells, in
the hope, I suppose, of feeding the flames with some human victims.
It is vastly entertaining!
As we came back we made the acquaintance of some very noteworthy
British soldiers. They call them Bantams.
The distinguishing feature of these men is their height, which is
below the average. There was a certain number of men in England who had
been rejected for service in the ranks because of their shortness. As
they were very keen to fight, somebody thought of forming them into a
special division.
And so the Bantam Division came into being. And these little cocks
can fight to the death, like those in whose battles the villages of
Northern England used to delight; and, little though they are, they
grow, if one may say so, at once to the size of Titans.
CHAPTER III.
THE GROUND OF HEROIC DEEDS.
Last year the ground that we are treading, this cold and rainy December
day, saw played out one of the most terrible acts of this terrible war.
It shook for weeks together during May and June, 1915, to the thunder
of vast opposing artilleries. Thousands of men moved over it and
drenched it with their blood.
This ground has seen the French Army, in a transport of courage, bind
for an instant the wings of victory; it has seen our battalions burst
at racing speed over trenches that were deemed impregnable; it has seen
Petain's men storm the Vimy Ridge and win a sight of the plain, the
goal of their desires, their promised land....
It has seen that!
I own frankly that, as I write these impressions, I am in the grip of
an emotion which I do not even try to conquer. Perhaps it is because
these events of May and June, 1915, are already so distant that time
has magnified their tragic splendour till they have acquired a sort of
legendary quality.
We reached this battlefield through the wood of Bouvigny, which lies
to the North-westwards of the crest of Notre Dame de Lorette. In this
wood, which is all close thickets and has few large trees, just before
the attack of May, an entire French division succeeded in gathering
without being discovered by the enemy.
You can still see clearly, at the Southern edge of the wood, the
first French trenches, in front of which, in October, 1914, after the
evacuation of Lille, the German hosts were stopped in their march to
the West. The breaking flood has eaten deeply into the slopes, as the
sea has done along the Breton Coast.
Two years will soon have passed over this devastated spot. The grass
and the moss have begun to take possession of the abandoned trenches,
to conceal the shell-holes and the dug-outs, to cover up the vast
wreckage of the battle, the dear relics of our soldiers. Nevertheless,
we see everywhere evidence of the madness with which they fought
hereabouts in May and June, 1915. Years, centuries, I believe, must
pass before every sign of these things will be gone.
No doubt the bones that one often finds scattered here and there,
refused by the ground, will crumble away and will return little by
little to the dust from which they came; these little nameless crosses,
made out of two sticks of different lengths fastened together, will
vanish; but on the spurs of Lorette, as at Carency, or at Ablain
Saint-Nazaire, there will always be something that will speak of the
spring of 1915--the ground.
We were anxious to see the ruins of the chapel. We found them only
with great difficulty. At last at the angle of a trench we came upon
its brick foundations and a small monument, set up since 1915 by some
pious hand. In a frame of wood and corrugated iron are three plaster
figures, the Holy Family, which were formerly in the chapel, with this
inscription:
"Memorial of the Holy Family of the Santa Casa of Notre Dame de
Lorette. August, 1916. The Guides and Protectors of valiant soldiers."
This monument cannot be said to be erected--since it is buried--but it
hides itself away in that part of the spurs of Lorette whence the eye
looks out beyond over the whole district. In clear weather one sees
the whole panorama of the German and French lines. One can trace their
windings by Angres, Lievin and Lens, and good eyes can follow them
right up to Lille. It is quite common, at any rate, to see the people
of this invaded piece of France going about their business in the
streets of, for example, Lens.
Opposite, to the East, are the chalky heights of Vimy, a little higher
than the ridge of Lorette, on which we are standing. Their summits are
at present held by the enemy.
We could not fail, while we were at Ablain, to compare the effect of
the 1915 gunfire with that of 1916. This comparison can, indeed, be
made wherever fighting had taken place before the Somme offensive.
In the sector of Ablain, Carency and Souchez our artillery had
delivered a weight of shell, in May and June 1915, such as had never
been known before. The enemy had been stunned by it. Yet, what a
different effect was wrought by the artillery during the Somme
offensive. At either Ablain, Carency or Souchez it is still possible to
see that there is a village, and even to rebuild it in imagination. The
skeletons are still standing.
But in Fricourt, Mametz, Thiepval and all the other villages which
were under fire in 1916, not one stone remains upon another. In 1915
it was destruction; in 1916 annihilation. The advance made in the
construction of artillery is written in the soil in unmistakable
characters, and no one who is not an expert can conceive how the
science of levelling things with the earth might be brought to any
greater perfection. Our further advance along these lines must, one
would say, be made downwards.
It is with deep regret that we leave these immense cities of the dead,
where so many Frenchmen sleep under the sympathetic wardenship of our
Allies.
CHAPTER IV.
A DINNER OF GENERALS.
This evening on our return from the lines we found the following
invitation:
"Dear Sir,--The General in Command will be very happy if you can dine
with him at eight o'clock."
We were, to tell you the truth, in such a state of dirtiness, so
horribly muddy and so tired, that at first we wondered if it was
possible for us to accept. But an invitation from a General--a General
in Command--amounts to an order. And so we made a quick toilet and
betook ourselves to the Head Quarters.
They had been established a mile or two from the little Flemish town,
in a _château_ built in the style of the Italian Renaissance, which we
were able, unfortunately, to admire by moonlight only.
The General, who was surrounded by a brilliant company of Generals and
Colonels, received us in the drawing-room. He made us welcome in the
purest French, saluting us as the representatives of the Press of an
Ally.
General Horn, commanding the 1st British Army, is a man about 60
years old. In this command he has succeeded Sir Douglas Haig, who is
now Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces. He is a tall man with a
youthful carriage. His whole person is instinct with the force of a
great leader. His eye is cold and stern, while thick, grizzled brows
add to the severity of his glance. But he is a ready and an agreeable
talker. It is clear that this leader, who holds in his hand the lives
of 200,000 men, is, also, a splendid gentleman.
Once at table we are overwhelmed with attentions. Our hosts vie with
one another in showing kindness to the Frenchmen. Here are men whose
names are already famous throughout Great Britain; one day this war
will make them known to the whole world.
We meet again, particularly, a number of faces which we have already
encountered during our travels. General Byng, for instance, whom I
have already had the honour to introduce to you; Curry, a General
of Division, a square-set John Bull in uniform, with eyes that are
peculiarly quick and intelligent. A man of business in time of peace,
he won his General's scabbard during the first Battle of Ypres. (An
English General is to be known by the crossed scabbard and sword, in
gold, on his epaulettes.)
He said, speaking of this sector of his:
"I am proud to command my men in positions which you have made
glorious." Brave heart! He has wept for his men. Here again is
Brigadier Kitchen; 45, fair, blue eyes, well set up, a kindly face;
he looks like a younger Kitchener. He has a career behind him, for he
fought in South Africa. Full of fire, he should be a wonderful leader
of men, of the order of Gouraud or Mangin.
Yet others----
And we talk. We talk as one talks round a table, that is, a little
about everything. Our hosts listen with a lively interest to such
news--it is fresh for them--as we can give them of the changes that
have recently taken place among the military and political leaders of
France. They are careful to keep their opinions on these matters to
themselves. At the most one can see that certain names are in good
odour among them.
It is impossible also not to speak of Rumania, whose capital has just
been taken. There is no doubt that what is happening in Rumania is
vexing to our Allies, but they are not disturbed. My neighbour, without
intending to do so, comforts my heart by proving to me mathematically
that the misfortunes of Rumania cannot bring any happiness into
Germany. He speaks of these things with a confidence in which sentiment
has no part, but rather the scientific knowledge of the war--if one may
say so--which is his.
It is from him that I glean this comforting detail--that the Germans
have organised special companies to serve during the days on which the
advances are made. Their troops in the front lines have now so little
willingness and, indeed, power to fight, that it has been necessary to
form special companies which the enemy moves hither and thither to meet
any particularly strong attacks.
"Perhaps when we get to that point," said one of the Generals near us,
"we shall begin to hear them bleating for peace."
"You are very certain of your men?" one of us asked him.
"They are full of beans," said he.
CHAPTER V.
WAR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY.
Trains follow each other every quarter of an hour--endless trains, 60
truck-loads and more, all bearing the mark of five big French companies.
Some of these convoys seemed to have been borrowed from a museum of
obsolete railways. The couplings rattle, the buffers are out of joint,
and the brakes squeak. Others come from Belgium. One can easily see by
the repairs that they have undergone all the horrors of war. Others,
again, emblazoned with the arms of Essen or Alsace-Lorraine, red in
colour and cumbersome, are obviously prisoners of war.
[Illustration: 9. THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.]
A Minister has actually dared to bring about a real mobilisation of
transport. He has ordered the seizure of all trucks in good condition,
and the captured have gone to the front. All of them are overflowing
with every species of coal. Coal! When one thinks of the shortage in
Paris and the provinces of France, one can appreciate the sight of
these millions of tons being rushed back from the front. Coal is the
black bread of war. At the level crossings the British regiments going
up into the line naturally give way to the greater urgency of these
supply trains.
We have just come back from visiting, under the guidance of a
Staff-Major, the land of shafts and mines. Certainly, war is being
waged there, but in a curious way, as if it were added on to ordinary
existence. B----, N----, les M----, V---- are so many stages in our
sooty pilgrimage!
In front of V----, after having wandered in these endless streets with
houses of miners' dwellings, all exactly alike, we come upon a huge
slag heap, 800 yards high, like some black pyramid. The neighbouring
pits, with their sheds, lifts and air-shafts, are working as usual.
We pass a party of miners, solemn and resolute-looking people, their
ages varying from 16 to 40, who are going to relieve the workers in the
galleries 200 yards below soil.
These civilian workers have just decided to do another hour a day.
They, too, have behaved like heroes.
The smoking pits are not a stone's throw from the smoking cannons.
The howitzers concealed in the Black Country alternate their "boom!"
with the sharper "crack!" of trench mortars. A London motor-'bus,
ingeniously disguised, crowded with soldiers inside and out, is
carrying a whole platoon of armed men to the shelter of one of these
slag heaps which line the roads.
Here, owing to the nature of the soil, the trenches cannot be dug down.
Thousands of pumps would be wanted to dry this sector alone.
The Royal Engineers have overcome the difficulty by having recourse
to the old system of breastworks. Here redoubts, facing all ways,
strong points with sloping parapets, buttresses, bastions, half-moons,
etc., are made with sandbags--the triumph of improvisation like the
inventions of a Pacciotto or a de Vauban. But more numerous than the
Tommies are the groups of women carrying baskets of provisions for
their menfolk.
Under the guidance of the General Commanding the Artillery of the Army,
we visited some batteries of 9.2 howitzers, those magnificent weapons
of destruction. What ruses! What profligate conceits are used to hide
these monstrous treasures from the enemy aircraft! After the war we
must consecrate a whole chapter to those obscure painters, designers of
"take-in's," who, working in the open country, succeed in faking the
skyline and every aspect of the earth--nay, all Nature herself.
A forward observing officer hidden somewhere on the ridge, which used
to be called the Hohenzollern Redoubt, has just rung up to say that he
has spotted some enemy transport moving in the mist behind their lines.
The map reference is immediately verified and the range ascertained. A
junior subaltern blows his whistle. In a second N.C.O.'s and men are
in position. Then they open fire, disturbing the peaceful landscape.
Just beside the battery was a beautiful pond with two swans--the most
unwarlike thing in the world. Five minutes later we hear that the
shooting was good and the transport was scuppered.
In these miners' dwellings and allotments, where war and humdrum
life are so strangely intermingled, there are many alarms. Aeroplane
bombs, gas attacks and hostile bombardments. When the siren starts,
everyone--women, children, old men and soldiers--go quietly into the
cellars and come up again when it is all over, as if it was the most
natural thing in the world.
Such is the life in the coal country. The Tommies in the trenches,
the artillery in the fields and gardens and the workmen in the mines.
Endless strife above ground, endless labour below, each night, each
day, the same.
France should honour these miners of Artois and Flanders just as much
as her soldiers.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ART OF SAVING.
Our hosts were very anxious to show us their Base at Calais, and, the
visit being over, we fully realise their reasons. The fact is they have
achieved miracles of hard work and organisation, of which they are
justly proud.
Dare I say that we had not taken full advantage of the port previous to
the war? It is possible that in this matter, as in so many others, the
war will have taught us useful lessons.
Why should Germany have consented to make such bloody sacrifices on the
Yser if Calais had not been a prize of great value?
A complete study of a base like Calais would require days and days. We
had only a few hours, and we only saw a few things, but things of the
utmost meaning, as the reader will see.
Everyone knows that the wear and tear of an army in the field is not
merely concerned with losses in men. There is a huge combustion of
materials which is almost as important. Even when there is no actual
offensive there is considerable wastage of material, as also of men.
But just as the commanders of fighting units have taken appropriate
measures to spare the human animal, such as sending troops back to rest
for a certain time, so the heads of army administration have devised
means of saving every article of "war-soiled" material. It is this
organisation that we have seen at work in Calais. Nothing could be more
instructive.
There exists in each British division at the front a divisional salvage
company, whose duty it is to clear up a battlefield and collect
somewhere behind the lines all damaged equipment--rifles, uniforms,
bayonets, guns, empty cases, machine-guns, helmets, leather waistcoats,
boots, etc.
This poor material, dirty, rusty, even blood-stained, is sorted out
at the salvage dump and sent down to the base by train. We saw one of
these trains arrive at Calais, and we were able to see some of the
ingenious devices invented for dealing with this curious hotch-potch.
All this takes place in an old sawmill, which has been enlarged to
five times its natural size since the beginning of the war. A thousand
skilled British workers and two thousand French women are now employed
in the workshops. Most of the women are, in normal times, lacemakers in
the town.
The men, skilled labourers in uniform, work by time, not by the piece.
They earn eighteenpence a day--i.e., 6d. more than the ordinary Tommy
in the trenches.
The women, of all ages, are used for light and not very exhausting
work, and they earn on the average 3 francs a day (the trades-union
price). What miracles take place! In the "snob-shop," the ammunition
boots, glorious souvenirs of the front, which come back in a shocking
state, are examined and repaired. Twenty thousand pairs a week. The
hopeless pairs are made into laces. One woman can make 150 per day.
At the saddlery, harness and leather, covered with mud and blood,
are cleaned as good as new. At the forge, wheels and couplings of
gun-carriages are repaired. Elsewhere the essential parts of the guns
are examined and all missing sections replaced.
In another place the dixies and camp-cookers, all dented and rusty, are
cleaned and re-soldered. Old petrol tins are made into trench braziers.
Steel helmets recover their form, picks and shovels their handles, and
all the iron that cannot be made use of is sent back to the foundry to
be melted down for ammunition.
Over the door of this war factory might be inscribed the motto of
Lavoisier, with a slight addition:--
"Here nothing new is made, but nothing old is wasted."
The science that is taught and practised is the science, hitherto too
little known, of economy.
That is the reason why many men of the world (and others) should, like
us, visit this base.
CHAPTER VII
"BROTHERS IN ARMS."
_The Times_, through the medium of its distinguished representative
with the British Army, Mr. Robinson, has recently published a very
laudatory and somewhat flattering article on the attitude of the
French soldier and the civil population of France towards the British
Expeditionary Force.
"It must not be forgotten," said the great journal of the
metropolis, "that we are foreigners in France. Thus the spectacle of
good-comradeship which we witness every day is altogether honourable to
our French hosts."
We must be allowed to say in our turn that never before has it been so
easy to practise the military virtue of comradeship, for my countrymen
are fully alive to the tact and perfect courtesy of the officers and
men of King George.
There is nothing to add to what has been known from the beginning
about the relations of the soldiers of both countries. Even before
the military prowess of Great Britain had been proved on the field of
battle, her collaboration in this war was desired by our soldiers and
civilians alike. We will always remember with emotion the fateful days
of 2nd and 4th August--when we asked ourselves, "Will England fight
with us?" Then, when that foolish Emperor of Germany talked of General
French's "contemptible little Army," we had in France the presentiment
that the British Army would be able to take its revenge.
Recent events have confirmed the early promise of fine achievements;
the battle of the Marne, the two battles of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle,
Loos, the Somme, and the Ancre have sealed the friendship of the two
armies.
Equally courageous and loyal, sharing the same ideas about the original
aims of the war, enduring the same hardships, patiently bearing common
misfortunes, and jubilant alike over common victory, the Tommy and the
"Poilu" have become "chums" that will be difficult to separate.
Two sorts of "_agents de liaison_" have helped in the good work--these
are the French interpreters and the Staff officers of the French
Mission to the British Army.
The former, a goodly number, well chosen, well-bred, and well
educated, have been, each in his own unit, sowers of the good seed of
Franco-British friendship.
The latter, a very small number (the result of careful sifting), having
a consummate experience of war, most of them possessing honourable
wounds, highly educated, some writers of reputation, known all over the
world--such as the author of "_Quand on se bat_"--deserve our utmost
thanks for their work with our Allies which they have carried out so
brilliantly.
The question of the relations of the British Army with the civil
population is delicate in appearance only. As a matter of fact, a
mutual goodwill from the very start has removed all suspicion of
awkwardness and strain.
The danger was obvious. In the records of history it is impossible to
find a case of a country tolerating without a murmur the presence of
a foreign army, even an allied army. This miracle has been rendered
possible by the goodwill of the French, fully understood and recognised
by our friends, and by the tact and common sense of the British.
Far from assuming an attitude of conquerors, which would most certainly
have estranged the sympathies of the patriotic inhabitants of
North-West France, the British have rigorously respected our manners
and customs.
Our administrative organisation has been maintained. We have still
our prefects and sub-prefects, our tribunals, justices of the peace,
savings banks, postal services and schools, living in absolute
independence in the midst of the British war machine.
Better still, our own military organisation still exists. In every
part of our country occupied by the British our Army has its
representatives, such as workers on the roads, Army Service Corps
units, and military police.
All this crowd, civilians and soldiers alike, "carry on" without the
smallest hitch or quarrel with our British guests. This occupation of
our territory, carried out with so much understanding and discipline,
could not possibly cause any discontent among our peasants.
Over and above the protection of a rich district, the British Army has
developed commercially a great number of ports and inland towns, has
created industries hitherto unknown, increased the railways, put to the
utmost use the resources of the country, and, in fact, has improved
local commerce in every respect.
Those who listen to the vile insinuations of the Germans and impute
to the British the desire of remaining in France after the war, little
understand the love of every British citizen for his native soil and
his respect for our own independence.
In order to divide our two friendly nations the Germans must find
another trick. Some money, great sympathy, and, alas! many dead, are
all that will be left of our friends in France after the war.[B]
[B] From the last despatch of Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig:
"I cannot close this Despatch without alluding to the happy relations
which continue to exist between the Allied Armies and between our
troops and the civil population in France and Belgium. The unfailing
co-operation of our Allies, their splendid fighting qualities, and the
kindness and goodwill universally displayed towards us have won the
gratitude, as well as the respect and admiration, of all ranks of the
British Armies."
[Illustration: 10. THE PRINCE OF WALES.]
PART IV.
IMPRESSIONS OF "NO MAN'S LAND."
CHAPTER I.
AS IN A PICTURE OF EPINAL.
Yesterday I met the Prince of Wales in the lines. The Prince of Wales!
What does that name not say to a Frenchman!
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. A small, soaking rain
was falling over the dismal plateau where once stood so many smiling
villages and fair woods, now ruined, whose names, immortalised by
British valour, must live forever in history.
It was close on nightfall. Through the sticky, heavy mud troops and
wagons crawled towards the firing line. The men, with naked chests
that defied the bitter cold, sweated furiously under the load of their
equipment. Horses with huge, hairy feet, mounted by Australians like so
many cowboys, struggled, foaming, to drag the huge lorries through the
deep ruts of the roadway.
Men from the pioneer battalions, directed by Engineers, worked with
pick and shovel to drain away the water, to rebuild the fallen
embankments, or to fill up boggy places. So while the guns roared,
methodically and in silence the Army prepared the soil for Victory.
Suddenly, into this microcosm of the war, came a body of horsemen,
climbing towards us up the slopes of the plateau. At their head rode
a lad whose features were so refined and so delicate that I could not
choose but remark him.
I have already met in the British battle lines several faces of this
kind. They are almost feminine. They are like miniatures.
My eyes--may I be forgiven--dwelt upon this boy with a complete lack
of respect. He looked between 18 and 20 years old at the most. He
had cocked his cap a trifle over his left eye, and his fair head was
cropped close as rabbit's fur.
"Did you recognise him?" someone asked me.
"Who?"
"The Prince of Wales."
The Prince of Wales had gone by.
It was only then that I noticed the British soldiers standing to
attention and saluting the Prince with "eyes right" as he went along
amongst them. The officers, too, saluted him with more ceremony than is
usual. And he, as he rode slowly past, very charmingly acknowledged the
salutes.
I have learned only this morning that a little farther on, at the
highest part of the plateau, the Prince left his horse and--this is a
thing that he is very fond of doing--joined a relieving party for a
piece of its journey. He returned in the evening to the simple quarters
which are his.
A Staff Captain at twenty-three, the Prince, heir to the Crown of the
British Empire, is a pattern of the best soldierly qualities. He can
only live happily among the soldiers, with whom he is prodigiously
popular.
It is said that he would have liked to do still more.
One day he asked permission of Lord Kitchener, who was then Secretary
of State for War, to perform the ordinary duties of an officer with
his regiment, the Grenadier Guards. He proposed to lead his men in an
advance.
But Kitchener refused absolutely, and we can imagine the valiant
argument which ensued between Prince and Sirdar--the one all youth and
pluck, the other concerned alone with the welfare of the Empire.
The Prince ultimately was obliged to yield to reasons of State. It was
a soldier's first victory--over himself.
CHAPTER II.
A HERO AFTER THE MANNER OF ROLAND.
December.
General Vaughan Campbell, Brigadier of the --th Infantry Brigade,
having done us the honour to pay us a visit, invited us, for this
Thursday, to share his meal.
The General has made his winter quarters in a country house, beside
which there is a duck-pond. An English breakfast awaited us; that is to
say, a hearty welcome, no ceremony, and food of the best.
Outside in the park, under the trees that the hoar-frost loads, the
brigade band favours us with the liveliest melodies from _Bric-à-brac_,
_The Girl in the Taxi_ and, above all, those _Bing Boys_, who seem
fated to eclipse _Tipperary_ itself in the general favour. It is three
degrees below freezing-point. All round the band they have had to
set a circle of braziers. I am on the General's left, a particular
distinction which I purchase at the cost of sitting with my back
against an open window, where I become the sport of a whole battlefield
of draughts. But it is a cheap price for the company of General Vaughan
Campbell.
This is one of the most popular men in the British Army. He must surely
be the youngest of its Generals, for he is not yet 38. This very month
King George has still further swelled the number of his orders by
giving him the Victoria Cross. Only 250 men in the whole Army can boast
of this honour.
The man's quality is evident. He is strength and good nature
personified. With his rider's legs, his broad, short body, muscular
yet supple, he is the picture of a sporting Englishman. The merry eye
betrays the simple heart. The wind and the open-air life have tanned
his face like a seaman's. He wears, moreover, an odd little cat's
moustache, two red, bristling tufts, which makes one think of the
traditional musketeers of Louis XIV. A little time ago I saw him run in
a two-mile race against some of his younger Staff Officers.
This General is a hero; a hero in that great style which glorifies
every gallant action with the touch of chivalry. One evening in the
trenches he performed a feat worthy of Roland.
The story is well known. In September last General Vaughan Campbell was
a Colonel in the Guards. His regiment held the first line, immediately
next to the Germans.
One evening the order came to attack at midnight. It fell to the
Coldstreams to undertake this dangerous business. It was a sweet and
tranquil autumn night. The men fought with sleep, harder to resist than
any pain. But the hour for the attack had come.
This Colonel has a knightly soul. He perceives that his men, far from
their home, living for ever in holes, and mud and fog, sometimes lose
their vision of the true meaning of this war. It is their souls that
must be stirred. And the Colonel, who used to be the keenest Master of
Fox Hounds in Shropshire, recollected that he had among his things a
hunting-horn whose call was clearer than any cornet's.
He got his men together, gave them the word to "go over," and then,
jumping on to the parapet, blew "gone away" with the full strength of
his lungs. As if in this fierce summons they heard the very voice of
their own country, the Coldstreams, wild with delight, charged madly
on the heels of this new Roland. The call of the horn sounded weirdly
through the night above "No Man's Land." It is to these men like the
bagpipes to the Highlander; a voice from the Homeland and the call of
the Empire.
Colonel Campbell is the first man in the enemy's trench. His cat's
moustache has become a tiger's. Even with his horn he lays about him.
With it he stuns the first Saxon he meets, to whose dazed eyes he seems
like some spectre from another age. And two lines of trenches are taken.
[Illustration: FORRARD AWAY!
THE DREAM
THE REALITY
11. A DRAWING IN "PUNCH" INSPIRED BY GENERAL CAMPBELL'S HEROIC ACT.
_Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of "Punch."_]
All England has heard the tale. The Guards, whom the Colonel left
but yesterday to become a General, have presented him with a silver
hunting-horn, inscribed, in commemoration of his deed, with an account
of it and this glorious motto: "Nulli Secundus." The King has rewarded
his magnificent exploit with the rank of General. And the Empire has
awarded him unhesitatingly that for which the bravest soldiers of this
brave race rejoice to die--the Cross that bears the words "For Valour."
A little time after the splendid action which I have recorded a young
girl, whose name is not known, sent the following letter to General
Campbell. This touching message alone would be enough to illustrate
this Book of the Friendship of France and Britain.
"Paris,
"8th December, 1916.
"I send you the thanks of a French girl for the gallant deed--the deed
_à la française_--which you have performed. We do not know one another,
perhaps we never shall, but in the sky there is many a meeting between
the stars. Why should not souls on earth come sometimes, then, together?
"General--Paladin, should I not say?--I knew your country very little.
I thought that the Divine Pity and the Greatest Beauty were unknown
to you; that through your fogs the light could never find its way.
And then you put your hunting horn to your lips; you were inspired so
beautifully to go to your encounter with Death, your head held high,
the music of your homeland sounding your advance.
"My ancestor fought at Fontenoy, and I can appreciate the refinements
of chivalry. And so I beg you to receive my apologies. You have
conquered much more than a horde out of Saxony. You have disclosed to
France the fabric of your soul, and you know that my country values
above all the courage that can laugh and the dazzling chivalry that
meets Death, as we say, in white gloves.
"And if, now and then, you are ever sad, think, I pray you, of the
fair little twenty-year-old French girl whose ignorance you have
enlightened, whom you have shown how to judge England. And if you have
no love of your own, no woman's tender care to warm your heart with
its genial kindliness, permit me to embrace you with all my soul. And
smile, sometimes, to think that the daughter of an officer of France,
the Land of Chivalry, is thinking of you.
"'A Happy Christmas. A Glad New Year.' I wish you a great victory and a
great love."
"Copy of a letter sent to General John Vaughan Campbell by favour
of Monsieur Tudesq. Will you have the very great kindness to bring
this expression of my admiration to the General? Accept also my
congratulations upon your truly heart-stirring narrative.
"J. F."
CHAPTER III.
MIDNIGHT IN THE FRONT LINE.
7th November.
"So you knew those people that have just gone by in the carriage,
Lovel."
"How should I know them?"
"Then why did you let them past you?"
"It's true, I wasn't strict enough. But they roared out such a
G.H.Q.[C] at me that I didn't dare to stop them."
[C] General Head Quarters.
"Wave your lantern, Lovel. Here's another carriage."
So chatted, during this night of 7th November, on the road to Bapaume,
two of His Majesty's Tommies. They were two scrubby little Scotsmen.
Each wore his tam-o'-shanter falling over one eye.
The night was almost beautiful; the sky covered with fleecy clouds,
among which, like a great liquid eye, the moon showed herself now and
then. We were going to spend the night in the English lines.
Very few sounds are to be heard. The farmers' dogs have long abandoned
this unpeaceful country, and the crowing of the cocks, those earliest
victims of every war, has even longer been stilled.
Silence reigns.
How is it, then, that this silence seems menacing? It only seems so.
Stop a moment and listen. Do you not now hear in the darkness a host of
little sounds? An invisible world is moving about us. Listen!
Yes, there is the sound of many feet on the road--not the brisk tramp
of the parade ground, but the steps of the poor souls who are fighting
their way through the mud. It is as if ten thousand little wings were
flapping.
All lights are out. The long stream of motor-cars moves upon the road
in perfect order. Midnight. Now the preparations for the advance are
at their height. Now is the time when the reliefs come up, the blessed
hour, so long expected by those who quit the trenches, by those who go
into them so bravely met.
In their English helmets, which look like basins upside-down, caked
with mud--already--to the eyes, with their rifles shouldered, slung,
or carried in the hand, but each one carefully protected by its canvas
cover, smoking their pipes, their chests thrown forward against the
weight of their bursting haversacks, steady of step and bright of eye,
the Tommies go forward to relieve their friends.
When they feel the need of a rest the men in khaki, quite regardless
of the mud, throw themselves down on the sopping earth, and man,
clothing, and soil become one. In this country of the dead you may
hardly distinguish shadows from the objects which throw them.
Every now and then a despatch rider passes us--day and night, it is
all one to these links in the chain of communication--a motor-cyclist,
crouched over his handle-bar, hands and nose frozen, eyes red, his
nerves on edge, skirting the side of the road, and sometimes remaining
there, stuck. Or perhaps it is a horseman, leading his exhausted beast
by its bridle, but determined, though he kill his horse, to get his
work done before morning.
But now the horizon, black hitherto, lights up with flashes that
seem to be lightning. These are followed by dull thuds. The British
artillery has chosen this moment before the dawn to reawaken the Boche
to the realisation of his own abominable existence.
Shall we climb this tree for a better view? Up there we shall see
marvellously. We grope our way upwards. The wind, which has risen
and now blows strongly, rocks the great tree and us with it in the
darkness. It is delightful. Think of all the brave fellows who climb up
here at all times of the day and night, to sit for hours in constant
peril of their lives! A stimulating thought!
And what a fine seat for the fireworks! One doesn't miss a thing.
See that blue light! And the red fire on the right! What's that
glow--look!--over there?
"An eighteen-inch," says somebody. He means that they have just fired
one of the great eighteen-inch guns. It is, of course, an English gun.
We continue our journey through the night, coming ever nearer to the
firing line. Our guide knows every smallest path of this section like
the palm of his hand--better, indeed, than his own London streets.
Here, lately, he got his first wound. There--where that anti-aircraft
gun is lurking--he saw his best friend fall. And this place is not safe
even yet. All round us the guns, great and small, sing their chorus to
the night. Was not that short thud, a moment ago, a 75? Odd, how things
get mixed up nowadays! A 75 with the English! Hullo, there! Can you
tell us what that was just now?
And now we are amazed to see an immense light which, how I cannot tell,
has suddenly flooded the whole sky with a red glare. Our guide, who has
passed months on end in the trenches, tells us that he has never before
seen this appearance. It seems like an _Aurora borealis_, pierced to
the zenith by a perpendicular ray, like an L, of a still fiercer red.
And now upon this weirdly-lit background rise thick spirals of vapour.
And the picture is miles long. Mysterious, deadly beauty, that the
bursting of the shrapnel seems to applaud!
There is no mystery. A squadron of German war planes has crossed the
first lines in the darkness and dropped incendiary bombs where it has
supposed a store of munitions to be. The perpendicular beam--a stripe
upon that red cloth--is the ray of a searchlight, probing the dark sky.
This _Aurora borealis_--this Northern Dawn--is the work of man, and
will soon be put to flight by the dawn of the coming day.
"And what's that, Major?" one of us asks, pointing to a star.
"One of the good God's aeroplanes," says the Englishman.
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH THE MINE AREA.
In Picardy, November.
A nobleman, with blue eyes and the haughty carriage that tells of
ancient blood, presented us to that diabolical young creature who is
making such a stir in the world to-day, and will make a good deal more
before she is done: Mademoiselle Crème de Menthe. Observe the "de." She
is a noble of the 1916 creation. Nothing less than a Peer and a Staff
Officer might fittingly act as Master of Ceremonies to a young person
of such quality.
We made our bow with a civility which bordered upon that terror which
nightmare alone can inspire. Consider how it would be, some mild,
foggy morning, to come plump upon a Diplodocus. The scene of this
presentation was an old mansion, with courtyard and park, whose gates
were made illustrious by the arms of the La Rochefoucaulds.
This was our first experience as war correspondents with the British
Army.
Our account of to-day's adventures will be no less fantastic.
Programme: A Journey to the Land of Mines.
We have had rain. Moving in opposite directions, the two streams of the
traffic plough up the road. Commissariat lorries, motor ambulances,
artillery ammunition wagons, despatch riders, the motor-cars of the
Staff, and then, in the middle of this mad torrent of traffic, some
country gig, creeping along at a jog-trot. The roads are a river of
mud. We wallow in it frantically; we drown in unsuspected lakes. We
suffer the modern equivalent of the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah.
At once we find ourselves being changed into clumsy statues of clay.
It is not more cars that are needed to get forward, but those Venetian
boats that glide along the canals before the strokes of a curved oar.
One does get on, however. And here we are at Albert already.
Ah! these little towns of Picardy! The German shells have no
surprises left for them. Their houses gutted from roof to cellar,
their churches that the guns have chiselled to new shapes, their farms
that have neither roof nor wall, and seem, with their bare beams, like
huge empty cages--these sorrows no longer count. Yesterday Albert was
once again bombarded. What of it? The fronts of a few more houses have
crumbled into dust. The great golden Virgin, who, 100 feet in the air,
leans with crossed arms from her belfry over the ruined town, has
fallen forwards at a rather dizzier angle!
[Illustration: 12. A MINE CRATER.]
As in London or Paris, the police direct the traffic at the cross-ways
and the corners of the lanes. The streets have been re-christened of
late. One reads: "Oxford Street," "Cannon Street." We are here in the
heart of the war zone. And in this strange country our little old
French towns rub their eyes in wonder to find themselves, heretofore
so insignificant, now in the very moment of their utter destruction,
wakened to share the dignity of _capitals_.
Still more miles of mud. We leave the road and, with the heavy gait of
sewer-men, move through the fields.
Far ahead, on the winding ridges, we see great white marks, like the
letter "Y." They are the German trenches, dug in the solid chalk at
the beginning of the offensive. It is as if someone had made chalk
drawings on those slopes to amuse the aeroplanes. In front, following
their lines, are walls of sand-bags, so high and so deep that they
appear to be a citadel: the English trenches. It is a stiff climb.
We hop from puddle to puddle like sparrows. Everywhere the earth is
in heaps. Holes filled with water--shell-holes, you understand--have
turned the whole place into a chessboard of sunken squares. Here, there
and everywhere, sole lords of this "No Man's Land," stand the shells of
the two-hundred-and-tens or the two-hundred-and-forties, like terminal
gods, red painted. But the real surprise still awaits us.
Here may I ask you to recall to your most particular remembrance the
landscapes of the Moon as Wells and Jules Verne have pictured them for
us. Or if chance has offered you the privilege of leaning over the
lip of Etna or Vesuvius, summon now your best recollections of the
experience. We are on the threshold of a chaos for whose description
the tongue of man is poorly equipped.
A plateau, according to the geographers, is a dome, flattened or
rounded, in the direction of Heaven; these plateaux, as war constructs
them, are gulfs that lead down towards hell. Over hundreds of yards
between the opposing trenches surges a sea of vast funnels. One stands
amazed before them as before those abysses which open at one's feet
among the Alps. Here the destructive genius of man has nothing to learn
from the dreadful wrath of Nature.
It is raining. Bogs, where the grass is already sprouting between the
yellow pools, lie in the low places, like those cold lakes that fill
the tall craters of Auvergne. Here yawns an opening, propped with
beams, and three-quarters covered with the continually sliding earth. A
sap. There again stands a notice, posted too late: "Poison!--Danger!"
Wreckage of every kind--rusty tins, heaps of cases bursting with rotten
bags of powder and saltpetre, litter these strange craters. And what an
amazing efflorescence of old iron, grenades and bits of shell!
In this Land of Mines we find a symbol of the savage splendour of
this war. All these carefully prepared horrors, all these apocalyptic
monstrosities, for the conquest of an acre or two! One can understand
why King George came here, as a wooden tablet records, to the edge of
this fabulous, petrified tide race, to salute the victorious courage of
the Empire's soldiers.
Beast-like around us roar the guns. Lightnings flicker through the
haze. A line of skeleton trees jags the horizon--Delville Wood. To the
West vague clouds of smoke from camp fires, vague heaps of bricks. This
is all that we can call Mametz and Montauban. A sausage balloon rises
jerkily--over there, towards Maricourt. One cannot speak these names
with a steady voice. They are the foretaste of Freedom. And it is here,
in the Land of Mines, that the foundations of Victory have been laid.
CHAPTER V.
THE MENACE OF THE GOLDEN VIRGIN.
I have now to tell of the reconquered ground, and I own that the
description, which I cannot claim to have invented, more nearly than
any other suggests the reality. Indeed, there are not in the French
language, nor can there be in any other, for the imagination cannot
conceive such things, any words that can give a just idea of so much
wretchedness and desolation.
So I have thought a score of times, while, during these last days, I
have been making my way over the plateau which lies between the Ancre
and the Somme, a quite narrow section of the battle front. What would
be my difficulty had I to describe the land that the French have
retaken!
We had set out on our pilgrimage from Albert.
"Albert! That's an old story--ancient history. Tell us about something
else," say those who look for new sensations.
Not so. We may not yet forget Albert, that ruined outpost of Picardy,
for her sufferings are not ended. Within the last few days the Boches
bombarded her from an immense distance. They only succeeded in knocking
over ruins, since all is ruin at Albert, but "if one can't get thrushes
one eats blackbirds," eh, friend Fritz?
"Well, Mother So-and-So," said an old fellow to an old dame the other
morning in a street in Amiens, "when do you think the folks will get
back into Albert?"
"Indeed, Father Such-and-Such, you know that as well as I do. When the
Golden Virgin falls."
For a superstition runs in this country that the war will be
near its end when the Golden Virgin, who hangs suspended--by what
miracle?--between Heaven and Earth, from the top of the belfry of
Albert, shall fall to break in pieces upon the ground. But the trouble
is that the Virgin "holds on."
From Albert to Fricourt, going via Bécordel-Bécourt, the road is hardly
1-1/2 miles long. By this way one skirts in an almost straight line the
South-western slopes of the plateau. A few steps beyond the German line
that was taken on the 1st July, and we are in Fricourt.
You will look a long time in the guide-books that were held in esteem
before the war ere you will find the smallest mention of Fricourt.
Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, Contalmaison and a dozen other villages
that now can never be forgotten, did not exist for the tourist. He got
on most happily without them.
Well, to-day all these villages can be found on their own soil no more
than in those guide-books. That, Fricourt! This grey blotch in front of
the wood of the same name! That, the Public Square, that rectangle of
tree-trunks!
That? Yes, that is very surely Fricourt. All the villages are like that.
Let us get on and you shall see for yourself. A short climb, but a
stiff one, and we are in Mametz.
You look about you and you see nothing at all. Believe me, I am not
joking. The number of mounds and wooden crosses of every size that
border the edges of the road tell us plainly enough at what a cost to
both sides these ruined hamlets were captured.
Another fight with the mud and we are in Montauban de Picardie.
Montauban looks over all this plateau that lies between the Ancre and
the Somme. In clear weather one can see everywhere around, and towards
the North-west the houses of Bapaume are visible. To-day the clouds are
too low and the rain too heavy for us to try to see anything at all.
One can, moreover, look at nothing but the earth, for it is here that
the story of recent events is most clearly to be read.
[Illustration: 13. THE MADONNA OF ALBERT.]
The first thing that one finds on entering Montauban is the little
cemetery on the left. To enter the village it was necessary first to
cross this cemetery; and to cross it, they had to "make jam" of it.
Will you be so good as to consider what a cemetery is like when it has
been made into jam? Grave-stones torn up and smashed, crosses thrown
down, Christs crucified again, iron railings twisted grotesquely,
vaults burst open, corpses.... Out of such a chaos, who shall ever
retrieve the dear graves of his dead?
And see these gaping holes where once were houses, these cellars laid
bare, the bellows of the blacksmith, bits of the trough where baker
Moulin kneaded his bread, splintered pieces of the chemist's bottles,
the whole stock of the draper's at the corner--ribbons, thread and
remnants--a fragment from the porch of the town hall, and on it the
word "_Égalité_."
Equality in suffering, one would say.
But perhaps we may find some sign of peace beyond the village in the
little wood of Bernafay, which in other days offered a calm retreat to
the weary and a shelter to lovers.
No! The wood of Bernafay is a wood no longer, and so it is with all the
pretty woods of this neighbourhood, Trônes, Belville and Foureaux. How
is one to describe this ghastly picture of roots, clayey soil freshly
ploughed up, shattered trunks of every size, and dismal stumps, among
which, none the less, the birds persist in their vain search for food
and cover?
These trees will bud again; Nature will clothe herself once more in
green; even the earth that lies about us will yield new fruits. But the
villages? What magical power shall call them back to life, unless it be
the marvellous vitality of France--France, who refuses to die?
CHAPTER VI
"RONNY."
This is not a Christmas story.
His real name was P----, but his name must not be mentioned on account
of the family who mourns for him in a corner of the County of Surrey.
We will simply call him "Ronny," as his school friends, and, later on,
his brothers-in-arms, used to call him.
"Ronny" was barely eighteen years old when war broke out. He was full
of spirit, and already had a knowledge of soldiering, so he volunteered
immediately, and soon got his commission.
His appearance was incredibly young. Fine features. A well-bred nose
and a child's eyes. When he first appeared in mess he was bombarded
with amiable chaff, all of which he took in good part and replied with
witty retaliation. He could exchange a joke without malice, like the
good sportsman that he was.
Above all, "Ronny" was fond of his job. He threw his whole soul into
the work of glory, which he accomplished with ease and grace, for he
had rare gifts of leadership. You should have seen him on the barrack
square with his men, this wisp of a boy. "Company, properly at ease
everywhere." The moment he spoke, discipline and obedience reigned. The
fact is, "Ronny" was "some" boy.
His Colonel thought him too good a soldier to leave behind when the
battalion was ordered abroad, even though he loved him as his son. Then
followed two long, weary years of fighting, which only served to draw
these two (master and pupil) closer together.
On 3rd September, 1916, during the Somme offensive, the battalion
was in action on the Ancre, and did gloriously. The day was won, but
at roll-call there was no "Ronny." At first he was said to be dead,
then wounded, but no trace of him could be found, either among the dead
or in the hospitals. So Captain P----, 20 years old, appeared in the
official lists as "Missing."
[Illustration: 14. "MULTIS ILLE BONIS FLEBILIS OCCIDIT."]
One day the Colonel received a letter from "Ronny's" parents. They had
seen his name in the lists. "What does this mean? They said 'Missing.'
Can we still hope?"
Between men of the same county and lineage, whose heart and blood have
but one pulse, there is no need to dissemble. "Your son was as my own,"
said the Colonel. "Our sorrow is the same."
So they mourned for "Ronny."
On 19th November two men, the Colonel and myself, visited, with heavy
hearts, the field of the Ancre (a further edition of the same fight),
still teeming with the heat of battle. The dead lay scattered around,
some horribly mutilated, some struck down in the very act of fighting,
with gestures of defiance to the enemy and their weapons--even to
Heaven itself. Alas, for the vanity of all human ambitions!
As for me--you remember, dear Colonel--I was distraught and beside
myself, and could only murmur, "Poor devils! Poor devils!" You were
calmer, more familiar (is it possible?) with these horrors. Yet your
sad eyes were a proof to me that even soldiers do feel.
I remember, as we turned to leave the field of death and honour, you
looked back, and I noticed that just in front of you, right in your
path, was a human head, already fleshless--a skull.
I seized you by the arm. "Stop!" I cried. Too late! Your heavy
boots---- The thing crushed like a broken egg-shell. I heard you say,
"God, if it were him!" "Who? What? Him?" I said. You didn't answer. You
were on your knees. The decaying cloth of the collar yielded to your
searching hands. The disc? Yes, there it was! ... I hear you now! I
shall never forget your cry: "Ronny, my Ronny!"
CHAPTER VII.
PIPING OUT THE DAY.
14th November.
It is just before sunset--the most impressive moment of the day in
these British lines. Now, wherever the British soldiers meet their
bands, the following picture may be seen.
We were returning from the trenches, a few evenings ago, at about four
o'clock. The sky was cloudy; the ground heavy. As the night fell, a
cold, penetrating fog enveloped the whole countryside. We were walking
thoughtfully along, our minds busy with those impressions of the war
which had greeted us, without pause, since morning. We said little, for
we were very ready for our beds.
Suddenly, as we were entering the village, the sound of music reached
our ears. It was the bagpipes. Music in this poor village, at this time
of day, and in such weather! Here's a bit of luck! Hurry up, there! We
hurry up; nay, we run. At last we reach the scene of action, where a
most pleasant sight awaits us.
In front is the principal street of the village, with its double row
of whitewashed houses. At the distance of a few hundred yards the fog
swallows it up. That is the town hall, hardly bigger than the biggest
of the houses, there where you see the _Journal Officiel_ posted, and
Abel Faivre's picture, "_On les aura!_"
The band is halted in the very middle of the road, facing the East.
In front, twelve pipers; behind, eight bugles and side drums; between
them, the big drum. The men wore the kilt flapping above their bare
knees, the khaki tunic closely belted at the waist, the plaid on their
shoulders, and the plumed tam-o'-shanter. They are magnificent men,
with deeply-bronzed faces; and they are as grave as sphinxes.
At a word from the bandmaster the four bugles leave the ranks, and two
by two, with measured steps, fall in at the head of the procession.
Slowly and in perfect time they put their instruments to their lips
and sound a retreat, or something of the kind. The air is very much
the same as the "lights out" of our own infantry regiments. The bugles
having gone back to their places with a repetition of their ceremonial,
it is the pipers' turn. The twelve Scotsmen blow like one. What are
they playing?
The unaccustomed ear of a Frenchman is puzzled to put a name to such
music. Is it a dance? Is it a lament?
The song of the pipes swells out louder, and now the bugles and drums
are to give it their support. But before touching their drums, the
drummers, with the derision of automata, bring their heels together,
throw out their chests, and then, raising their elbows face high, cross
the drumsticks behind their necks.
Only then may they begin to play.
The Scotsman who handles the big drum hits it first on one side and
then on the other, and each time whirls his free drumstick like a
windmill. He is not perhaps a musical virtuoso, but there can be no
question about his ability as a juggler.
And now the bandsmen, who have stood, hitherto, motionless in the
middle of the village, bestir themselves, and, marking time to their
own music, move forwards with a slow and majestic step.
The sadness of the music, the gravity of the Scotsmen, the falling
night, the homeliness of the place, and a certain indefinable flavour
as of some pagan rite, stir one's heart strangely.
Meanwhile, the village street has become filled with soldiers.
Various detachments, just back from their work, fall in along the
sides of the roadway. The men, with their steel helmets and leather
coats, their breasts exposed to the wind, look like the legionaries of
Rome. Nothing is lacking to this picture but the incense and the altar
and the victims.
The short, sharp words of command and the clink of weapons mingle with
the wailing of the pipes, while at their cottage doors the lonely wives
of French soldiers look on calmly at all this bustle in their street. A
little fair-headed girl beats time to the music with her left hand.
The night has been saluted by the armies of Britain.
The night may now come.
CHAPTER VIII.
Y GULLY.
Between Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt, near the bend which the Ancre
makes where it turns to meet the Somme, there is a deep gully, about
three hundred yards across, which the Tommies have christened--probably
they were a trifle short of words that day--with the last letter but
one of the alphabet. It is called Y Gully.
Up to the very last fight on the Ancre the German lines ran in front
of this gully, to the West. The enemy made use of this most valuable
hollow to conceal there his reserves of men and ammunition. Its western
cliffs could easily afford cover to a full brigade of infantry--and,
indeed, they did so. At the bottom of the ravine runs a railway, in
peace time of the ordinary gauge. The Germans, however, had found
occasion to substitute for it a Décauville, and this was used, under
the protection of the little valley, by the three German lines which
defended the summit against the British troops. The position seemed to
be one of tremendous strength.
One could almost detest Nature, so often and so terribly does she
seem to make herself the confederate of our most formidable enemies.
But mankind, in the person of our British Allies, has revenged itself
upon her for this undesirable amiability, and out of a pretty winding
valley, over whose blossoming soil the feet of lovers were wont to
stray, has created this blasted gorge, this Gorge of Death, this Valley
of Jehoshaphat, where one expects at every turn to meet with some
mourning Jeremiah.
The Tommies who have opened the road for us to this abode of misery had
to overcome the greatest difficulties. I have already described this
battlefield at the very moment of the offensive, while it was still
covered by its dead. I could not find, on this my second visit, a trace
of those poor bodies which the grave-diggers had just finished hiding
out of sight. The Tommies who fell in this fight were collected into
vast common graves, which kindly hands have marked out with frames
of pebbles. As for the German bodies, they were buried in their own
trenches--to fill them up was all that was necessary--or in the shell
craters where the machine-gun had dropped them. And so in this ravine
Death is on every side, and the ground has, in many places, taken the
shapes of the bodies that lie beneath it.
The eyes of all the "poilus"--the real ones, the men of Douaumont, and
Vaux, and the ravine of La Caillette, and many another of these lunar
landscapes--have rested upon similar scenes, which remind one a little
of those undistinguished districts in the suburbs of Paris where the
dustmen come to shoot their rubbish.
The earth, which one might take to have been brought here in ten
thousand carts, is nothing, so far as the eye can carry, but little
dusty craters, so thickly scattered that their overlapping sides break
into one another.
They are of every size, according to the calibre of the shells which
have made them. Inside these innumerable volcanoes are scattered,
pell-mell among the hardly-covered bodies, all the small possessions of
the soldier, with shells that have not burst, bombs, books, letters,
bandages, blood....
Such is the Gully in all its tragic beauty, with its heaped-up
soil, its road destroyed, its few trees in splinters, its scattered
graves, its scent of death, its heavy silence, its sides pitted with
shell-holes and smashed dug-outs, its dead horses and their carrion
flesh.
On the right, the Ancre, swollen by the rain, flows, indifferent and
peaceful, beside its slaughtered poplars; and on the left bank the
houses of bombarded Gueudecourt, the ruins of Thiepval, and all the
mourning landscape that surrounds us, seem to advise us not to let our
eyes linger upon the ravine, and to tell us that all Nature is worthy
of our pity and that the earth has become indeed the great valley of
tears of which the psalmist sings.
CHAPTER IX.
CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN "NO MAN'S LAND."
The setting is not a Biblical one. If, indeed, this cursed spot can
possibly recall the Book of Books, we must search the chapter of
immortal horrors in the Book of Revelation.
No vegetation will grow there within the next ten years; no ghost of a
tree or shadow of a house; the moon reveals the troubled earth whose
chalky mud is as a festering sore.
There is universal destruction, as though a huge tidal-wave,
overrunning the plain and the valley, had been struck by God's anger
and checked in the full force of its rolling waters. The evening of the
last day could bring no greater melancholy. Three horrors rule this
strip of land--Fright, Death and Frost. A bitter cold night with a
starry sky--such was Christmas in "No Man's Land."
And what of "man"? Here we have a Scotsman from the mountains, gaunt,
dour, wiry, with lynx-like eyes, the lusty chest of a woodman and the
soul of a hermit. Like hundreds of thousands and tens of hundreds
of thousands of his brother-soldiers, he had held the line in front
of Ypres, Loos and Arras. Like the soldiers of England, Ireland and
Wales, he had known the mist of Flanders, the marshes of the mine
country, the mossy peat of Artois. Like his fellows, he is weary.
With his grey-steel helmet, the leathern, fleece-lined waistcoat and
the leggings of buffalo-hide which show up the muscles of his legs,
you might think he was a centurion of the Roman Empire. Like all the
others, his name is Tommy.
[Illustration: 15. NEAR THE Y RAVINE.]
This Christmas Night Tommy has a care. The "bonnie Highland lassie"
whom he was courting in the good old days, when Highlanders had not yet
earned the ferocious nick-name of the "square-jawed," had written to
him that morning asking for a souvenir. A souvenir!
Those of you who have not seen Tommy, notwithstanding the certainty
of punishment, bartering his regimental badges or buttons in exchange
for a kiss from some village beauty, can hardly understand this
superstitious worship of "a souvenir." That word sums up all the
dangers, hardships and glories of war, and is considered the surest of
love tokens. But for soldiers of His Majesty's Guards the real souvenir
is the one snatched from the enemy in mortal combat. The day after the
Battle of the Ancre--that is, the day after the attack and victory--I
saw little groups of men scattered over the battlefield indifferent
to hostile barrages and machine-gun fire. These men, crawling from
shell-hole to shell-hole, looked only on the ground. _They were
souvenir hunting._
Now for our story. Tommy is in a listening post--a crump-hole between
the two trenches surrounded with barbed wire. The Germans are 30 yards
in front and the British 10 yards behind him. He hears the enemy's
observers behind their loopholes stamping their feet to keep them warm.
Small clouds shade the moon. A heavy silence pervades the frozen earth.
This Highlander is alone in "No Man's Land."
Is he thinking of the Christmas turkey, brown and crackling in its
juice, which has been carefully fattened at the farm at home; of the
plum-pudding, aflame with brandy, done to a turn by his bonnie lassie?
Is he thinking of the dying embers and the midnight kiss, stolen or
given--who knows? No; Tommy is simply thinking of "souvenirs."
Twice already, but in vain, he has searched his crump-hole. He can't
find the smallest relic. Creeping under the knife rests, and separating
with care the ring of wire which the British call "trench concertina
wire," he drags himself on his stomach through the wire system. These
iron blackberries catch hold of him and prick him. He likens himself to
one of those great trench rats on a poaching foray.
Suddenly his hand falls upon a human form. The body is cold--a corpse!
He remembers, a week ago, an evening patrol was caught by our artillery
fire, and this is one of them. "No Man's Land" in this sector is not
particularly healthy, and grave-diggers are dispensed with. This
dried-up corpse was so much part of the landscape that Tommy had not
noticed it. He now looks at it with a friendly eye. "Poor old Boche!
Poor old lump of souvenirs!" Tommy is a simple fellow. He goes straight
for what he wants. He first thought he would take the identity-disc.
That would be a fine souvenir; but the corpse has no arms, so he gives
up that idea. "D----d artillery that spoils even corpses!" he grumbles,
and then feels for the legs. Perhaps the old Boche keeps a knife in his
right legging. "Damn again! There is no right leg--nor left either!"
If only a sharp breeze were to lift the clouds from the moon, the
wide-open eyes of the observers would discover in "No Man's Land" a
great lusty Highlander, white as a sheet or as the whitest of white
Pierrots.
Suddenly our Highlander is seized with a mixture of horror and rage,
added to which there is a feeling of weird pride. The living and the
dead have made a ghastly Christmas bet.
Tommy hovers over this wreck of a man. He seizes the Boche's head--of
course, the helmet, badges and bandolier have disappeared.
The corpse, as though from the depths of the other world, gives a
horrid laugh. Tommy forces his fingers into the grinning mouth, but
the jaws shut with a spring--like a mousetrap. False teeth! Tommy,
exasperated, seizes the grim trophy.
The bonnie lassie will receive shortly a gold brooch inscribed with her
name and Tommy's. She will wear it proudly at church. She will make her
friends jealous without anyone ever suspecting the real history of the
souvenir. Perhaps it is as well!
Now this is not a Christmas story, but a real fact, which happened
on the evening of "Everyman's" Christmas among the outposts before
Grandcourt.
_Printed in Great Britain by Hayman, Christy and Lilly, Ltd., 113-117,
Farringdon Road, London, E.C._
Transcriber's Notes:
Retained inconsistent hyphenation of sandbags vs. sand-bags.
Changed oe ligatures to oe for the text edition; ligatures are retained
in the HTML.
Italics are represented with _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Square Jaw, by Henry Ruffin and André Tudesq
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