My Second Year of the War Part 23

Occasionally a soldier or an officer came out of a doorway that sent forth a stream of light, and upstairs in the munic.i.p.al building where we went to pay our respects to the general commanding the army that had won the victory which had thrilled France as none had since the Marne, we found that it was the regular hour for his staff to report. They reported standing in the midst of tables and maps and standing received their orders. In future, when I see the big room with its mahogany table and fat armchairs reserved for directors' meetings I shall recall equally important conferences in the affairs of a nation that were held under simpler auspices.

This conference seemed in keeping with the atmosphere of the place: n.o.body in any flurry of haste and n.o.body wasting time. One after another the officers reported; and whatever their ages, for some would have seemed young for great responsibilities two years before, they were men going about their business alert, self-possessed, reflective of the character of their leader as staffs always are, men whose feet and whose minds never dragged. When they spoke to anybody politeness was the lubricant of prompt exchange of thought, a noiseless, eight-cylinder, hundred-horse-power sort of staff. If the little Corsican could have looked on, if he could have seen the taking of Douaumont, or if Wellington could have seen the taking of the Ridge, I think that they would have been well satisfied--and somewhat jealous to find that military talent was so widespread.

The man who came out of the staff-room would have won his marshal's baton in Napoleon's day, I suppose, though he was out of keeping with those showy times. I did not then know that he was to be Commander-in-Chief; only that all France thrilled with his name, which time will forever a.s.sociate with Douaumont. At once you felt the dynamic quality under his agreeable manner and knew that General Nivelle did things swiftly and quietly, without wasteful expenditure of reserve force, which he could call upon when needed by turning on the current.

There was a stranger come to call; it was a rainy night; we had better not drive back to the hotel at Bar-le-Duc, he suggested, but find a billet in town, which was hospitality not to be imposed upon when one could see how limited quarters were in this small village. Some day I suppose a plaque will be put up on the door of that small house, with its narrow hall and plain hat-rack and the sitting-room turned into a dining-room, saying that General (perhaps it will be Marshal) Nivelle lived here during the battle of Verdun. It is a fine gift, simplicity.

Some great men, or those who are called great, lack it; but nothing is so attractive in any man. No sentry at the door, no servant to open it.

You simply went in, hung up your cap and took off your raincoat.

Hundreds of staffs were sitting down to the same kind of dinner with a choice of red or white wine and the menu was that of an average French household. I recall this and other staff dinners, in contrast to costly plate and rich food in a house where a gold Croesus with diamond eyes and necklace should have been on the mantelpiece as the household G.o.d, with the thought that even war is a good thing if it centers ambition on objects other than individual gain. Without knowing it, Joffre, Castelnau, Foch, Petain, Nivelle and others were the richest men in France.

A colonel when the war began, in the sifting by Father Joffre to find real leaders by the criterion of success General Nivelle had risen to command an army. Wherever he was in charge he got the upper hand of the enemy. All that he and his officers said reflected one spirit--that of the offensive. They were men who believed in giving blows. A nation looking for a man who could win victories said, "Here he is!" when its people read the _communique_ about Douaumont one morning. He had been going his way, doing the tasks in hand according to his own method, and at one of the stations fame found him. Soldiers have their philosophy and these days when it includes fame, probably fame never comes. This time it came to a soldier without any of the showy qualities that fame used to prefer, one who, I should say, was quite unaffected by it owing to a greater interest in his work; a man without powerful influence to urge his promotion. If you had met him before the war he would have impressed you with his kindly features, well-shaped head and vitality, and if you know soldiers you would have known that he was highly trained in his profession. His staff was a family, but the kind of family where every member has telepathic connection with its head; I could not imagine that any officer who had not would be at home in the little dining-room. Readiness of perception and quickness of action in intelligent obedience were inherent.

Over in his office in the munic.i.p.al building where we went after dinner the general took something wrapped in tissue paper out of a drawer and from his manner, had he been a collector, I should have known that it was some rare treasure. When he undid the paper I saw a photograph of General Joffre autographed with a sentiment for the occasion.

"He gave it to me for Douaumont!" said General Nivelle, a touch of pride in his voice--the only sign of pride that I noticed.

There spoke the soldier to whom praise from his chief was the best praise and more valued than any other encomium.

When I spoke of Douaumont he drew out the map and showed me his order of the day, which had a soldierly brevity that made words keen-edged tools.

The attacking force rushed up overnight and appeared as a regulated tidal wave of men, their pace timed under cover of curtains of fire which they hugged close, then over the German trenches and on into the fort. Six thousand prisoners and forty-five hundred French casualties!

It was this dramatic, this complete and unequivocal success that had captured the imagination of France, but he was not dramatic in telling it. He made it a military evolution on a piece of paper; though when he put his pencil down on Douaumont and held it fast there for a moment, saying, "And that is all for the present!" the pencil seemed to turn into steel.

All for the present! And the future? That of the army of France was to be in his hands. He had the supreme task. He would approach it as he had approached all other tasks.

You had only to look at General Mangin commanding the corps before Verdun to know that attack was not alone a system but a gospel with him.

Five stripes on his arm for wounds, all won in colonial work, sun-browned, swart, with a strong, ab.u.t.ting chin which might have been a fit point for Nivelle's pencil, an eye that said "Attack!" and could twinkle with the wisdom of many campaigns!

"General Joffre sat in that chair two hours before the advance," he said, with the same respectful awe that other generals had exhibited toward the Commander-in-Chief.

The time had come for the old leader, grown weary, to go; for the younger men of the school which the war has produced, with its curtains of fire and wave attacks, to take his place. But the younger ones in the confidence of their system could look on the old leader while he lived as the great, indomitable figure of the critical stages of the war.

A man of iron, Mangin, with a breadth of chest in keeping with his chin, who could bear the strain of command which had brought down many generals from sheer physical incapacity. Month after month this chin had stood out against German drives, all the while wanting to be in its natural element of the offensive. His resolute, outright solution of problems by human ratios would fit him into any age or any climate. He was at home leading a punitive expedition or in the complicated business of Verdun. Whether he was using a broadsword or a curtain of fire he proposed to strike his enemy early and hard and keep on striking. In the course of talking with him I spoke of the contention that in some cases in modern war men could be too brave.

"Rarely!" he replied, a single word which had the emphasis of both that jaw and that shrewd, piercing eye.

"What is the best time to go out to the front?" I asked the general.

"Five o'clock in the morning!"

The officer who escorted me did not think anything of getting up at that hour. Mangin's is a five-o'clock-in-the-morning corps.

Shall I describe that town on the banks of the Meuse which has been described many times? Or that citadel built by Vauban, with dynamos and electric light in its underground chambers and pa.s.sages, its hospitals, shops, stores and barrack room, so safe under its walls and roof of masonry that the Germans presciently did not waste their sh.e.l.ls on it but turned them with particular vengeance on the picturesque old houses along the river bank, neglecting the barracks purposely in view of their usefulness to the conquerors when Mecca was theirs. There must be something sacred to a Frenchman in the citadel which held life secure and in the ruins which bore their share of the blows upon this old fortress town in the lap of the hills, looking out toward hills which had been the real defense.

Interest quickened on the way to the Verdun front as you came to the slopes covered with torn and fallen trees, where the Germans laid their far-reaching curtains of fire to catch the French reserves struggling through mud and sh.e.l.l-craters on those February and March days to the relief of the front line. Only when you have known the life of an army in action in winter in such a climate can you appreciate the will that drove men forward to the attack and the will of the defenders against outnumbering guns, having to yield, point by point, with shrewd thrift, small bands of men in exposed places making desperate resistance against torrents of sh.e.l.ls.

Verdun was German valor at its best and German gunnery at its mightiest, the effort of Colossus shut in a ring of steel to force a decision; and the high-water mark of German persistence was where you stood on the edge of the area of mounds that sh.e.l.ls had heaped and craters that sh.e.l.ls had scooped by the concentration of fire on Fort Souville. A few Germans in the charge reached here, but none returned. The survivors entered Verdun, the French will tell you with a shrug, as prisoners.

Down the bare slope with its dead gra.s.s blotched by craters the eye travels and then up another slope to a crest which you see as a c.u.mulus of sh.e.l.l-tossed earth under an occasional sh.e.l.l-burst. That is Douaumont, whose taking cost the Germans such prolonged and b.l.o.o.d.y effort and aroused the Kaiser to a florid outburst of laudation of his Brandenburgers who, by its capture, had, as Germany then thought, brought France to her death-gasp.

On that hill German prestige and system reached their zenith; and the answer eight months later was French _elan_ which, in two hours, with the swiftness and instinctive cohesion of democracy drilled and embattled and asking no spur from an autocrat, swept the Germans off the summit. From other charges I could visualize the precise and spirited movement of those blue figures under waves of sh.e.l.l fire in an attack which was the triumphant example of the latest style of offensive against frontal positions. There was no Kaiser to burst into rhetoric to thank General Nivelle, who had his reward in an autographed photograph from Father Joffre; and the men of that charge had theirs in the grat.i.tude of a people.

Fort Vaux, on another crest at the right, was still in German hands, but that, too, was to be regained with the next rush. Yes, it was good to be at Verdun after Douaumont had been retaken, standing where you would have been in range of a German sniper a week before. Turning as on a pivot, you could identify through the gla.s.ses all the positions whose names are engraved on the French mind. Not high these circling hills, the keystone of a military arch, but taken together it was clear how, in this as in other wars, they were nature's bastion at the edge of the plain that lay a misty line in the distance.

Either in front or to the rear of Souville toward Verdun the surprising thing was how few soldiers you saw and how little transport within range of German guns; which impressed you with the elastic system of the French, who are there and are not there. Let an attack by the Germans develop and soldiers would spring out of the earth and the valleys echo with the thunder of guns. A thrifty people, the French.

When studying those hills that had seen the greatest German offensive after I had seen the offensive on the Somme, I thought of all that the summer had meant on the Western front, beginning with Douaumont lost and ending with Douaumont regained and the sweep over the conquered Ridge; and I thought of another general, Sir Douglas Haig, who had had to train his legions, begin with bricks and mortar to make a house under sh.e.l.l fire and, day by day, with his confidence in "the spirit that quickeneth" as the great a.s.set, had wrought with patient, far-seeing skill a force in being which had never ceased attacking and drawing in German divisions to hold the line that those German divisions were meant to break.

Von Falkenhayn was gone from power; the Crown Prince who thirsted for war had had his fill and said that war was an "idiocy." It was the sentiment of the German trenches which put von Falkenhayn out; the silent ballots of that most sensitive of all public opinion, casting its votes with the degree of its disposition to stand fire, which no officer can control by mere orders.

With the Verdun offensive over, the German soldiers struggling on the Ridge had a revelation which was translated into a feeling that censorship could not stifle of the failure of the campaign to crush France. They called for the man who had won victories and the Kaiser gave them von Hindenburg, whom fortune favored when he sent armies inspirited by his leadership against amateur soldiers in veteran confidence, while the weather had stopped the Allied offensive in the West.

Imagine Lee's men returning from Gettysburg to be confronted by inexperienced home militia and their cry, "The Yanks have given us a rough time of it, but you fellows get out of the way!" Such was the feeling of that German Army as it went southward; not the army that it was, but quite good enough an army to win against Rumania with the system that had failed at Verdun.

x.x.xI

_AU REVOIR_, SOMME!

Sir Douglas Haig--Atmosphere at headquarters something of Oxford and of Scotland--Sir Henry Rawlinson--"Degumming" the inefficient--Back on the Ridge again--The last sh.e.l.l-burst--Good-bye to the mess--The fellow war-correspondents--_Bon voyage_.

The fifth of the great attacks, which was to break in more of the old first-line fortifications, taking Beaumont-Hamel and other villages, was being delayed by Brother Low Visibility, who had been having his innings in rainy October and early November, when the time came for me to say good-byes and start homeward.

Sir Douglas Haig had been as some invisible commander who was omnipresent in his forceful control of vast forces. His disinclination for reviews or display was in keeping with his nature and his conception of his task. The army had glimpses of him going and coming in his car and observers saw him entering or leaving an army or a corps headquarters, his strong, calm features expressive of confidence and resolution.

There were many instances of his fine sensitiveness, his quick decisions, his Scotch phrases which could strip a situation bare of non-essentials. It was good that a man with his culture and charm could have the qualities of a great commander. In the chateau which was his Somme headquarters where final plans were made, the final word given which put each issue to the test, the atmosphere had something of Oxford and of Scotland and of the British regular army, and everything seemed done by a routine that ran so smoothly that the appearance of routine was concealed.

Here he had said to me early in the offensive that he wanted me to have freedom of observation and to criticise as I chose, and he trusted me not to give military information to the enemy. When I went to take my leave and thank him for his courtesies the army that he had drilled had received the schooling of battle and tasted victory. How great his task had been only a soldier could appreciate, and only history can do justice to the courage that took the Ridge or the part that it had played in the war.

Upstairs in a small room of another chateau the Commander-in-Chief and the Commander of the Fourth of the group of armies under Sir Douglas--who had played polo together in India as subalterns, Sir Henry Rawlinson being still as much of a Guardsman as Sir Douglas was a Scot--had held many conferences. Sir Henry could talk sound soldierly sense about the results gained and look forward, as did the whole army, to next summer when the maximum of skill and power should be attained.

In common with Nivelle, both were leaders who had earned their way in battle, which was promoting the efficient and shelving or "degumming,"

in the army phrase, the inefficient. Every week, every day, I might say, the new army organization had tightened.

With steel helmet on and gas mask over the shoulder for the last time, I had a final promenade up to the Ridge, past the guns and Mouquet Farm, picking my way among the sh.e.l.l-craters and other grisly reminders of the torment that the fighters had endured to a point where I could look out over the fields toward Bapaume. For eight and ten miles the way had been blazed free of the enemy by successive attacks. Five hundred yards ahead "krumps" splashing the soft earth told where the front line was and around me was the desert which such pounding had created, with no one in the immediate neighborhood except some artillery officers hugging a depression and spotting the fall of sh.e.l.ls from their guns just short of Bapaume and calling out the results by telephone, over one of the strands of the spider's web of intelligence which they had unrolled from a reel when they came. I joined them for a few minutes in their retreat below the skyline and listened to their remarks about Brother Low Visibility, who soon was to have the world for his own in winter mists, rain and snow, limiting the army's operations by his perversity until spring came.

And so back, as the diarists say, by the gra.s.sless and blasted route over which I had come. After I was in the car I heard one of the wicked screams with its unpleasant premonition, which came to an end by whipping out a ball of angry black smoke short of a near-by howitzer, which was the last sh.e.l.l-burst that I saw.

Good-bye, too, to my English comrades in a group at the doorway: to Robinson with his poise, his mellowness, his wisdom, his well-balanced sentences, who had seen the world around from mining camps of the west to Serbian refugee camps; to "our Gibbs," ever sweet-tempered, writing his heart out every night in the human wonder of all he saw in burning sentences that came crowding to his pencil-point which raced on till he was exhausted, though he always revived at dinner to undertake any controversy on behalf of a better future for the whole human race; to blithesome Thomas who will never grow up, making words dance a tune, quoting Horace in order to forget the sh.e.l.ls, all himself with his coat off and swinging a peasant's scythe; to Philips the urbane, not saying much but coming to the essential point, our scout and cartographer, who knew all the places on the map between the Somme and the Rhine and heard the call of Pittsburgh; to Russell, that pragmatic, upstanding expert in squadrons and barrages, who saved all our faces as reporters by knowing news when he saw it, arbiter of mess conversations, whose pungent wit had a movable zero--luck to them all! May Robinson have a stately mansion on the Thames where he can study nature at leisure; Gibbs never want for something to write about; Thomas have six crops of hay a year to mow and a garden with a different kind of bird nesting in every tree; Philips a new pipe every day and a private yacht sailing on an ocean of maps; Russell a home by the sea where he can watch the ships come in--when the war is over.

It happened that High Visibility had slightly the upper hand over his gloomy brother the day they bade me _bon voyage_. My last glimpse of the cathedral showed it clear against the sky; and ahead many miles of rich, familiar landscape of Picardy and Artois were to unfold before I took the cross-channel steamer. I knew that I had felt the epic touch of great events.

THE END