From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 Part 5

Then, quite recently, there came the rumour of a German retreat. On Thursday, March 15, the German commandant sent for the Mayor and announced the news. He gave orders for all the inhabitants to leave their houses at 6.30, and to a.s.semble in the streets, while certain houses and streets indicated were to be destroyed. The German commandant, whose name was Herwaardt, said he greatly regretted this necessity. The work was to be carried out by his Oberleutnant Baarth.

The people wept at the destruction of their homes, though the houses in the centre of Nesle were spared. But they were comforted by the promise of liberation. For a week previously the enemy had been withdrawing his stores. The garrison consisted of about 800 to 1000 men of the 38th Regiment of Cha.s.seurs and Cyclists. The gunners were the last to leave, and went away at midnight with the rear-guard of infantry. By half-past seven in the morning there was not a German soldier left in Nesle, and at half-past nine a British patrol entered, and the women and children surrounded our men, laughing and weeping. To-day they were being fed by British soldiers, and were waiting round the field-kitchens with wistful eyes.

II

THE LETTER OF THE LAW

MARCH 23

On both sides cavalry patrols are scouting in the woods and villages, and for a few days at least the situation has been extraordinarily like those early days of the war in October of 1914, when our cavalry was operating in Flanders, feeling forward cautiously to test the enemy's strength. For the first time since those days German Uhlans have again been seen on the Western Front. They have been seen moving about the woods and on the skyline.

Little parties of them are in hiding behind the broken walls of villages destroyed in the German retreat. Now and again they b.u.mp into our advanced posts and then bolt away, not seeking a fight. These are the manoeuvres of open warfare not seen on our Front since the trenches closed us in. Our cavalry patrols are working in the same way. Yesterday one of them encountered some of the enemy on the road to St.-Quentin and very close to that town, where fires are still burning. Our mounted men were suddenly called to a halt by a sharp fusillade of rifle and machine-gun bullets. The enemy this time was unmounted and entrenched, and after reconnoitring this position our patrol galloped back.

It is difficult to know always the exact whereabouts of the enemy's advanced posts, as they were scattered about the countryside without any definite trench line, so that officers of corps and divisional staffs who are going out to examine the lie of the land, with a secret hope of finding an adventure on the way, are taking out revolvers, which have long been idle. I found a young staff officer to-day fastening his holster to his belt before starting out on his morning's expedition, and he slapped it and laughed, and said, "I haven't done this for over two years. It is quite like old times." It brings back reminiscences to me also of old days, when with two comrades I moved about the roads of war ignorant of the enemy's position and narrowly escaping his advance-guards. But, after all, it is no joke, and I should hate to get into the middle of an enemy patrol somewhere in this country of burnt and abandoned villages, through which I have been wandering with tired eyes in the sight of all this destruction, so wanton, so brutal, and so ruthless.

For the enemy has adopted the letter of the law in that code of cruelty which governs war, and I can think of nothing more d.a.m.nable than the horror which came to some hundreds of poor souls, mostly women and children and old stricken men in the village of Rouy-le-Pet.i.t above the Somme.

Many of them had been driven into this hamlet from neighbouring villages, which the Germans set on fire. Huddled in the streets of Rouy, they saw the smoke and flames rising from their homesteads, and they were terrorized and crushed. Presently the last German rear-guard went out from Rouy, not cheering and singing as they came in August of 1914, but silent and grim, conscience-stricken also, it seemed, so the French people have told me, because of the law which made them do the things they had done. They had been friendly with the villagers before they smashed their houses, and had been good to the children before breaking their bedsteads and making them homeless. They said again and again in self-excuse, "It is war; it is the order of our high officers! We are bound to do it."

The German guns rumbled through the street of Rouy, and went away with gunners and cyclists and infantry. Night came, and all the noise of distant artillery died down, and there was hardly the sound of a shot over all the country where for nearly three years there has been the ceaseless fire of artillery. Early next morning a British patrol entered the village, and the people crowded round, clasping the soldiers' hands and thanking G.o.d for deliverance, and telling of their hunger, which was near starving-point. Then the worst happened. Suddenly sh.e.l.ls began to fall over the village, crashing through the roofs and flinging up the ground in the roadway. They were German sh.e.l.ls fired by the German gunners who had left only a few hours before. They were not meant to kill the civilians who had been gathered at Rouy, all the women and children and old, weak men. They were meant to kill the British patrols, and so were lawful as an act of war. But one could not be done without the other, and there were civilians who were wounded in Rouy-le-Pet.i.t that day. Weeping and wailing, they rushed down into the cellars and took refuge there, while flights of sh.e.l.ls followed and tore holes in rooms and walls, and filled the village with smoke and splinters. And that is the lawfulness of war and the horror of war.

When the enemy left he blew up all the cross-roads and made many mine-craters along the way of his retreat. They have scarcely checked us at all, and a tribute of praise is due to our infantry and our labour battalions, who have been repairing those roads with quick, untiring industry. To-day I have met with much traffic of war, French as well as British traffic, the men in blue marching by the men in brown through country where both armies meet. The French soldiers were marching with their bands and colours through the ruined villages, and I never saw more splendid men even in the early days of the war, when the great armies of France went forward with a kind of religious pa.s.sion and flung back the Germans from the Marne. Our own men had no bands and no colours. There was not the same sense of drama as they pa.s.sed, but these clean-shaven boys of ours, hardened by foul weather, by frost, and rain-storms, and blizzard, go forward into the great waste, which the enemy had left behind him, in their usual matter-of-fact way, whistling a tune or two, pa.s.sing a whimsical word along the line, settling down to any old job that comes in a day's work, and finding as much comfort as they can at the end of a long day's march on the lee side of a sh.e.l.l-broken wall.

III

THE ABANDONED COUNTRY

MARCH 24

After long days of tiring adventure in the wake of the German rear-guards, following through places only just evacuated, and tramping through the great ruin they have left behind them, I have tried to give some idea of the tragic drama of it all, the uncanny quietude of the abandoned country, the frightful wreckage of towns and villages destroyed, not by sh.e.l.l-fire, but by picks and axes and firebrands, the deep mine-craters blown under roads, the broken bridges across the Somme, the crowds of starved civilians surrounding our patrols in market squares where they had been herded while their homes were in flames around them, the little bodies of British troops advancing through barbed-wire entanglements into fortress positions like Bapaume and p.r.o.nne, and our cavalry patrols feeling their way forward into unknown country where the enemy's rear-guards are in hiding.

That, in a few lines, is the historical picture of this strange new phase of warfare in which we have been pushing forward during the past two weeks. But through it all, to me, an onlooker of these things, there has been one special theme of interest. It is the revelation of the German way of life behind his lines--these abundant lines--his military methods of defence and observation and organization, and the domestic arrangements by which he has tried to make himself comfortable in the field of war. Along every step of the way by which he has retreated there are relics which show us exactly how our enemies lived and fought when they were hidden from us across No Man's Land, and their philosophy of life in war. All that is worth a little study.

Everywhere--outside Bapaume and p.r.o.nne and Chaulnes, and all those deserted places near the front lines--one ugly thing stares one in the face: German barbed wire. It is heavier, stronger stuff than ours or the French, with great cross-pieces of iron, and he has used amazing quant.i.ties of it in deep wide belts in three lines of defence before his trench systems, and in all sorts of odd places, by bridges and roads and villages even far behind the trenches, to prevent any sudden rush of hostile infantry or to tear our cavalry to pieces should we break his lines and get through. His trenches were deeply dug, and along the whole line from which he has now retreated they are provided with great concreted and timbered dug-outs leading into an elaborate system of tunnelled galleries perfectly proof from sh.e.l.l-fire, and similar to those which I have described often enough in the Somme battlefields. As a builder of dug-outs the German soldier has no equal. But in addition to these trench systems he made behind his lines a series of strong posts cunningly concealed and commanding a wide field of fire with dominating observation over our side of the country.

I found such a place quite by accident yesterday. My car broke down by a little wood near Roye looking across to Damery and Bouchoir, and the woody, wired fields which till a week ago were No Man's Land. When I strolled into the wood I suddenly looked down an enormous sand-pit covering an acre or so, and saw that it was a concealed fortress of extraordinary strength and organization--an underground citadel for a garrison of at least 3000 men perfectly screened by the wood above. Into the sand-banks on every side of the vast pit were built hundreds of chambers leading deeper down into a maze of tunnels which ran right round the central arena. Before leaving the enemy had busied himself with an elaborate packing up, and had taken away most of his movable property, but the "fixtures" still remained, and a litter of mattresses stuffed with shavings, empty wine-bottles, candles which had burnt down on the last night in the old home, old socks and old boots and old clothes no longer good for active service, and just the usual relics which people leave behind when they change houses.

The officers' quarters were all timbered and panelled and papered, with gla.s.s windows and fancy curtains. They were furnished with bedsteads looted from French houses, and with mirrors, cabinets, washhand-stands, marble-top tables, and easy chairs. The cross-beams of the roofs were painted with allegorical devices and with legends such as "Gott mitt uns," "Furchtlos und treu," "In Treue fest."

Each room had an enamelled or iron stove, so that the place must have been snug and warm, and I noticed in several of them empty cages from which singing birds had flown when German officers opened the doors before their own flitting.

The men's quarters were hardly less comfortable, and the whole place was organized as a self-contained garrison, with carpenters' shops and blacksmiths' sheds, and a quartermaster's stores still crowded with bombs and aerial torpedoes--thousands of them, which the enemy had left behind in his hurry--and kitchens with great stoves and boilers, and a Red Cross establishment for first aid, and concrete bath-houses with shower-baths and cigar-racks for officers, who smoke before and after bathing. Outside the artillery officers' headquarters was a board painted in white letters, with the following couplet:

Schnell und gut ist unser Schuss Deutscher Artilleristen Gruss.

(Quick and good is our shooting Of the German gunners' greeting.)

Sh.e.l.l-craters in the open arena showed the French gunners had returned the greeting, and that the garrison of this citadel had done well to arrange their life mainly as a subterranean existence. But at times when the French guns were quiet and when the French sun was shining they had built alfresco corners with garden seats and tables, round which enormous stacks of wine-bottles were littered, showing, as I have seen in all these abandoned places, the enormous quant.i.ty of drink consumed by German officers in their lighter moments.

This citadel in the wood is only one out of similar strong points all along the lines now abandoned by the enemy. p.r.o.nne, with Mont-St.-Quentin on its flank, and with the Somme winding around it, and with forests of barbed wire in the marshes below it, could be called impregnable if any place may defy great armies. It was wonderfully fortified with great industry and great skill for over two years, and walking into these places now, marvelling at their strength, I can only ask one question, which certainly the enemy will find it hard to answer.

Why has he abandoned such formidable strongholds? It seems to me that there is only one answer. It is because they had to go and not because they wanted to go. It was because they have no longer the strength to hold their old line against the growing gun-power and the growing man-power of the British Armies, and have been compelled to attempt a new strategy which will save their reserves and shorten their line.

Behind the lines the German officers and men lived comfortably in French billets, and organized amus.e.m.e.nts for battalions in rest. At Bapaume they had a little theatre with painted scenery. Two of the wings were among the few things left in the rubbish-heaps of that poor destroyed town, burnt and sacked by the Germans before they left, and when I went in there with our troops some Australian soldiers propped them up against the walls of a gutted house and inscribed upon them in white chalk the name "Maison de la Co-ee," inviting their comrades to walk up and see the finest show on earth. In Nesle the Germans turned the Caf de Commerce into their casino, and played military bands, whose music did not cheer the hearts of wan women whose children were starving.

Strange fellows! Who knows what to make of them? The French people just liberated from their rule, which was a reign of terror in the severity of its official regulations, contradict themselves in expressing their white-hot hatred of the German character and their liking for the individual soldiers who were quartered on them.

"They were kind to the children ... but they burnt our houses."--"Karl was a nice boy. He cried when he went away.... But he helped to smash up the neighbours' furniture with an axe."--"The lieutenant was a good fellow ... but he carried out the orders of destruction."

A woman told me, with a quivering rage in her voice, that a German officer rode his horse into her room one day. Another woman showed me the cut down her hand and arm which she had received from a German soldier who tried to force his way into her house at night. Other stories have been told me by women white with pa.s.sion.... Yet it is clear that, on the whole, the Germans behaved in a kindly, disciplined way until those last nights, when they laid waste so many villages and all that was in them.

IV

THE CUR OF VOYENNES

MARCH 25

In the village of Voyennes, not far from Ham, and one of the few hamlets not utterly destroyed, because the people of the district were herded here while their own houses were being burnt, I went into the ruins of the church. It was easy to see how the flames had licked about its old stones, scorching them red, and how the high oak roof had come blazing down before the walls and pillars had given way. Everything had been licked down by flame except one figure on an encalcined fragment of wall. Only one hand of the Christ there had been burned, and the body hanging on the Cross was unscathed, like so many of those Calvaries which I have seen in sh.e.l.l-fired places.

But this place had not been touched by sh.e.l.l-fire, for it had been far beyond the range of French or British guns; it had been destroyed wilfully. The village around had been spared because of the large number of people driven into it from the neighbouring countryside, and when I called upon the priest who lives opposite the ruin of the church, where he served G.o.d and the people of his little parish, I heard the story of its burning.

It was a queer thing to me to sit to-day in that room of the French presbytery talking to the old Cur. Just a week before, on Sunday, at the very hour of my visit, which was at midday, that old church outside the window had become a blazing torch, and this priest, who loved it, had wept tears as hot as its flames, and in his heart was the fire of a great agony. He sat before me, a tall old man of the aristocratic type, with a finely chiselled face, but thin and gaunt, and as sallow as though he had been raised from the dead. If I could put down his words as he spoke them to me with pa.s.sion in his clear, vivid French, with gestures of those transparent hands which gave a deeper meaning to his words, it would be a great story, revealing the agony of the French people behind the German lines. For the story of this village of Voyennes is just that of all the villages on the enemy's side of the barbed wire.

Here in a few little streets about an old church were the bodily suffering, the spiritual torture, the patient courage, the fight against despair, the brooding but hidden fears, which have been the life over a great tract of France since August 1914. "For a year," said M. le Cur Caron, "my people here have had not a morsel of meat and not a drop of wine, and only bad water in which the Germans put their filth. They gave us bread which was disgusting, and bad haricots and potatoes, and potatoes and haricots, and not enough even, so that the children became wan and the women weak. The American people sent us some food-stuffs, but the Germans took the best of them, and in any case we were always hungry. But those things do not matter, those physical things. It was the suffering of the spirit that mattered, and, monsieur, we suffered mentally so much that it almost destroyed our intelligence, it almost made us silly, so that even now we can hardly think or reason, for you will understand what it meant to us French people. We were slaves after the Germans came in and settled down upon us, and said, 'We are at home; all here is ours.' They ordered our men to work, and punished them with prison for any slight fault. They were the masters of our women, they put our young girls among their soldiers, they set themselves out deliberately at first to crush our spirit, to beat us by terror, to subdue us to their will by an iron rule. They failed, and they were astonished. 'We cannot understand you people,' they said; 'you are so proud, your women are so proud.' And that was true, sir. Some women, not worthy of the name of French women, were weak--it was inevitable, alas!--but for the most part they raised their heads and said, 'We are French, we will never give in to you, not after one year, nor two years, nor three years, nor four years.'

"The Germans asked constantly, 'When do you think the war will end?' We answered, 'Perhaps in five years, but in the end we will smash you,' and this made them very angry, so our people went about with their heads up, scornful, refusing to complain against any severity or any hardship.

"Secretly among ourselves it was different. We could get no news for months except lies. We knew nothing of what was happening.

Starvation crept closer upon us. We were surrounded by the fires of h.e.l.l. As you see, we are in the outer section of the great Somme battle line, and very close to it. For fifty hours at a time the roar of guns swept round us week after week, and month after month, and the sky blazed around us. We were afraid of the temper of the German officers after the defeat on the Marne, and after the battles of the Somme Germany was like a wounded tiger, fierce, desperate, cruel. Secretly, though our people kept brave faces, they feared what would happen if the Germans were forced to retreat. At last that happened, and after all we had endured the days of terror were hard to bear. From all the villages around, one by one, people were driven out, young women and men as old as sixty were taken away to work for Germany, and an orderly destruction began, which ended with the cutting down of our orchards and ruin everywhere. The Commandant before that was a good man and a gentleman, afraid of G.o.d and his conscience. He said, 'I do not approve of these things. The world will have a right to call us barbarians.' He asked for forgiveness because he had to obey orders, and I gave it him. An order came to take away all the bells of the churches and all the metalwork. I had already put my church bells in a loft, and I showed them to him, and said, 'There they are.' He was very sorry. This man was the only good German officer I have met, and it was because he had been fifteen years in America and had married an American wife and escaped from the spell of his country's philosophy. Then he went away. Last Sunday, a week ago, at this very hour when the people were all in their houses under strict orders, and already the country was on fire with burning villages, a group of soldiers came outside there with cans of petroleum, which they put into the church. Then they set fire to it, and watched my church burn in a great bonfire. At this very hour a week ago I watched it burn.... That night the Germans went away through Voyennes, and early in the morning, up in my attic, looking through a pair of gla.s.ses I saw four hors.e.m.e.n ride in. They were English soldiers, and our people rushed out to them. Soon afterwards came some Cha.s.seurs d'Afrique, and the Colonel gave me the news of the outer world to which we now belong after our years of isolation and misery. Our agony had ended.... The Germans know they were beaten, monsieur; a Commandant of Ham said, 'We are lost.' After the battles of the Somme the men groaned and wept when they were sent off to the Front. 'G.o.d,' they cried, 'the horror of the French and English gun-fire; O Christ, save us!' During the battles of the Somme the wounded poured back, a thousand or more a day, and Ham was one great hospital of bleeding flesh. The German soldiers have bad food and not enough of it, and their people are starving as we starved. The German officers behaved to their men with their usual brutality. I have seen them beat the soldiers about the head while those men stood at attention, not daring to say a word, but as soon as the officers are out of the way, the men say, 'We will cut those fellows' throats after the war. We have been deceived! After the war we will make them pay.'"

So the Cur talked to me, and I have only given a few of his words, but what I have given is enough.

V

THE CHTEAU OF LIANCOURT