Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front Part 26

And as nearly as can be learned from the cabled accounts that is where the attack was made.

A captain from General d'Urbal's staff met us at the trenches, and pointed out the strategical value of a certain place, the certainty of a German advance, and the preparations that were made to meet it.

It was odd to stand there in the growing dusk, looking across to where was the invading army, only a little over two thousand feet away. It was rather horrible to see that beautiful landscape, the untravelled road ending in the line of poplars, so very close, where were the French outposts, and the shining water just beyond, and talk so calmly of the death that was waiting for the first Germans who crossed the ca.n.a.l.

CHAPTER XIX

"I NIBBLE THEM"

I went into the trenches. The captain was very proud of them.

"They represent the latest fashion in trenches!" he explained, smiling faintly.

It seemed to me that I could easily have improved on that latest fashion. The bottom was full of mud and water. Standing in the trench, I could see over the side by making an effort. The walls were wattled--that is, covered with an interlacing of f.a.gots which made the sides dry.

But it was not for that reason only that these trenches were called the latest fashion. They were divided, every fifteen feet or so, by a bulwark of earth about two feet thick, round which extended a communication trench.

"The object of dividing these trenches in this manner is to limit the havoc of sh.e.l.ls that drop into them," the captain explained. "Without the earth bulwark a sh.e.l.l can kill every man in the trench. In this way it can kill only eight. Now stand at this end of the trench. What do you see?"

What I saw was a barbed-wire entanglement, leading into a cul-de-sac.

"A rabbit trap!" he said. "They will come over the field there, and because they cannot cross the entanglement they will follow it. It is built like a great letter V, and this is the point."

The sun had gone down to a fiery death in the west. The guns were firing intermittently. Now and then from the poplar trees came the sharp ping of a rifle. The evening breeze had sprung up, ruffling the surface of the water, and bringing afresh that ever-present and hideous odour of the battlefield. Behind us the trenches showed signs of activity as the darkness fell.

Suddenly the rabbit trap and the trench grew unspeakably loathsome and hideous to me. What a mockery, this business of killing men! No matter that beyond the ca.n.a.l there lurked the menace of a foe that had himself shown unspeakable barbarity and resource in plotting death. No matter if the very odour that stank in my nostrils called loud for vengeance. I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German wounded responding so readily to kindness and a smile. I saw them driven across that open s.p.a.ce, at the behest of frantic officers who were obeying a guiding ambition from behind. I saw them herded like cattle, young men and boys and the fathers of families, in that cruel rabbit trap and shot by men who, in their turn, were protecting their country and their homes.

I have in my employ a German gardener. He has been a member of the household for years. He has raised, or helped to raise, the children, has planted the trees, and helped them, like the children, through their early weakness. All day long he works in the garden among his flowers. He coaxes and pets them, feeds them, moves them about in the sun. When guests arrive, it is Wilhelm's genial smile that greets them. When the small calamities of a household occur, it is Wilhelm's philosophy that shows us how to meet them.

Wilhelm was a sergeant in the German Army for five years. Now he is an American citizen, owning his own home, rearing his children to a liberty his own childhood never knew.

But, save for the accident of emigration, Wilhelm would to-day be in the German Army. He is not young, but he is not old. His arms and shoulders are mighty. But for the accident of emigration, then, Wilhelm, working to-day in the sun among his Delphiniums and his iris, his climbing roses and flowering shrubs, would be wearing the helmet of the invader; for his vine-covered house he would have subst.i.tuted a trench; for his garden pick a German rifle.

For Wilhelm was a faithful subject of Germany while he remained there.

He is a Socialist. He does not believe in war. Live and help others to live is his motto. But at the behest of the Kaiser, Wilhelm too would have gone to his appointed place.

It was of Wilhelm then, and others of his kind, that I thought as I stood in the end of the new-fashion trench, looking at the rabbit trap. There must be many Wilhelms in the German Army, fathers, good citizens, kindly men who had no thought of a place in the sun except for the planting of a garden. Men who have followed the false G.o.ds of their country with the ardent blue eyes of supreme faith.

I asked to be taken home.

On the way to the machine we pa.s.sed a _mitrailleuse_ buried by the roadside. Its location brought an argument among the officers.

Strategically it would be valuable for a time, but there was some question as to its position in view of a retirement by the French.

I could not follow the argument. I did not try to. I was cold and tired, and the red sunset had turned to deep purple and gold. The guns had ceased. Over all the countryside brooded the dreadful peace of sheer exhaustion and weariness. And in the air, high overhead, a German plane sailed slowly home.

Sentries halted us on the way back holding high lanterns that set the bayonets of their guns to gleaming. Faces pressed to the gla.s.s, they surveyed us stolidly, making sure that we were as our pa.s.ses described us. Long lines of marching men turned out to let us pa.s.s. As darkness settled down, the location of the German line, as it encircled Ypres, was plainly shown by floating _fusees_. In every hamlet reserves were lining up for the trenches, dark ma.s.ses of men, with here and there a face thrown into relief as a match was held to light a cigarette. Open doors showed warm, lamp-lit interiors and the glow of fires.

I sat back in the car and listened while the officers talked together.

They were speaking of General Joffre, of his great ability, of his confidence in the outcome of the war, and of his method, during those winter months when, with such steady fighting, there had been so little apparent movement. One of the officers told me that General Joffre had put his winter tactics in three words:

"I nibble them."

CHAPTER XX

DUNKIRK: FROM MY JOURNAL

I wakened early this morning and went to church--a great empty place, very cold but with the red light of the sanctuary lamp burning before a shrine. There were perhaps a dozen people there when I went in.

Before the Mater Dolorosa two women in black were praying with upturned eyes. At the foot of the Cross crouched the tragic figure of the Mother, with her dead Son in her arms. Before her were these other mothers, praying in the light of the thin burning candles. Far away, near the altar, seven women of the Society of the Holy Rosary were conducting a private service. They were market women, elderly, plain, raising to the altar faces full of faith and devotion, as they prayed for France and for their soldier-children.

Here and there was a soldier or a sailor on his knees on a low prie-dieu, his cap dangling loose in his hands. Unlike the women, the lips of these men seldom moved in prayer; they apparently gazed in wordless adoration at the shrine. Great and swelling thoughts were theirs, no doubt, kindled by that tiny red flame: thoughts too big for utterance or even for form. To go out and fight for France, to drive back the invaders, and, please G.o.d, to come back again--that was what their faces said.

Other people came in, mostly women, who gathered silently around the Mater Dolorosa. The great empty Cross; the woman and the dead Christ at the foot of it; the quiet, kneeling people before it; over all, as the services began, the silvery bell of the Ma.s.s; the bending backs of the priests before the altar; the sound of fresh, boyish voices singing in the choir--that is early morning service in the great Gothic church at Dunkirk.

Onto this drab and grey and grieving picture came the morning sunlight, through roof-high windows of red and yellow and of that warm violet that glows like a jewel. The candles paled in the growing light. A sailor near me gathered up his cap, which had fallen unheeded to the floor, and went softly out. The private service was over; the market women picked up their baskets and, bowing to the altar, followed the sailor. The great organ pleaded and cried out. I stole out. I was an intruder, gazing at the grief of a nation.

It was a transformed square that I walked through on my way back to the hotel. It was a market morning. All week long it had been crowded with motor ambulances, lorries, pa.s.sing guns. Orderlies had held cavalry horses under the shadow of the statue in the centre. The fried-potato-seller's van had exuded an appetising odour of cooking, and had gathered round it crowds of marines in tam-o'-shanters with red woollen b.a.l.l.s in the centre, Turcos in great bloomers, and the always-hungry French and Belgian troopers.

Now all was changed. The square had become a village filled with canvas houses, the striped red-and-white booths of the market people.

War had given way to peace. For the clattering of accoutrements were subst.i.tuted high pitched haggling, the cackling of geese in crates, the squawks of chickens tied by the leg. Little boys in pink-checked gingham ap.r.o.ns ran about or stood, feet apart, staring with frank curiosity at tall East Indians.

There were small and carefully cherished baskets of eggs and bundles of dead Belgian hares hung by the ears, but no other fresh meats.

There was no fruit, no fancy bread. The vegetable sellers had only Brussels sprouts, turnips, beets and the small round potatoes of the country. For war has shorn the market of its gaiety. Food is scarce and high. The flower booths are offering country laces and finding no buyers. The fruit sellers have only shrivelled apples to sell.

Now, at a little after midday, the market is over. The canvas booths have been taken down, packed on small handcarts and trundled away; unsold merchandise is on its way back to the farm to wait for another week and another market. Already the market square has taken on its former martial appearance, and Dunkirk is at its midday meal of rabbit and Brussels sprouts.

CHAPTER XXI

TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS

Later: Roland Garros, the French aviator, has just driven off a German _Taube_. They both circled low over the town for some time. Then the German machine started east with Garros in pursuit. They have gone out of sight.

War is not all grey and grim and hideous. It has its lighter moments.

The more terrible a situation the more keen is human nature to forget it for a time. Men play between sh.e.l.ls in the trenches. London, suffering keenly, flocks to a comedy or a farce as a relief from strain. Wounded men, past their first agony, chaff each other in the hospitals. There are long hours behind the lines when people have tea and try to forget for a little while what is happening just ahead.