My Year of the War Part 1

My Year of the War.

by Frederick Palmer.

To the Reader

In 'The Last Shot', which appeared only a few months before the Great War began, drawing from my experience in many wars, I attempted to describe the character of a conflict between two great European land-powers, such as France and Germany.

"You were wrong in some ways," a friend writes to me, "but in other ways it is almost as if you had written a play and they were following your script and stage business."

Wrong as to the duration of the struggle and its bitterness and the atrocious disregard of treaties and the laws of war by one side; right about the part which artillery would play; right in suggesting the stalemate of intrenchments when vast ma.s.ses of troops occupied the length of a frontier. Had the Germans not gone through Belgium and attacked on the shorter line of the Franco-German boundary, the parallel of fact with that of prediction would have been more complete. As for the ideal of 'The Last Shot', we must await the outcome to see how far it shall be fulfilled by a lasting peace.

Then my friend asks, "How does it make you feel?" Not as a prophet; only as an eager observer, who finds that imagination pales beside reality. If sometimes an incident seemed a page out of my novel, I was reminded how much better I might have done that page from life; and from life I am writing now.

I have seen too much of the war and yet not enough to a.s.sume the pose of a military expert; which is easy when seated in a chair at home before maps and news dispatches, but becomes fantastic after one has lived at the front. One waits on more information before he forms conclusions about campaigns. He is certain only that the Marne was a decisive battle for civilization; that if England had not gone into the war the Germanic Powers would have won in three months.

No words can exaggerate the heroism and sacrifice of the French or the importance of the part which the British have played, which we shall not realize till the war is over. In England no newspapers were suppressed; casualty lists were published; she gave publicity to dissensions and mistakes which others concealed, in keeping with her ancient birthright of free inst.i.tutions which work out conclusions through discussion rather than take them ready-made from any ruler or leader.

Whatever value this book has is the reflection of personal observation and the thoughts which have occurred to me when I have walked around my experiences and measured them and found what was worth while and what was not. Such as they are, they are real.

Most vital of all in sheer expression of military power was the visit to the British Grand Fleet; most humanly appealing, the time spent in Belgium under German rule; most dramatic, the French victory on the Marne; most precious, my long stay at the British front.

A traveller's view I had of Germany in the early period of the war; but I was never with the German army, which made Americans particularly welcome for obvious reasons. Between right and wrong one cannot be a neutral. In foregoing the diversion of shaking hands and pa.s.sing the time of day on the Germanic fronts, I escaped any bargain with my conscience by accepting the hospitality of those warring for a cause and in a manner obnoxious to me. I was among friends, living the life of one army and seeing war in all its aspects from day to day, instead of having tourist glimpses.

Chapters which deal with the British army in France and with the British fleet have been submitted to the censor. Though the censor may delete military secrets, he may not prompt opinions. Whatever notes of praise and of affection which you may read between the lines or in them spring from the mind and heart. Undemonstratively, cheerily as they would go for a walk, with something of old-fashioned chivalry, the British went to death.

Their national weaknesses and strength, revealed under external differences by a.s.sociation, are more akin to ours than we shall realize until we face our own inevitable crisis. Though one's ancestors had been in America for nearly three centuries, he was continually finding how much of custom, of law, of habit, and of instinct he had in common with them; and how Americans who were not of British blood also shared these as an applied inheritance that has been the most formative element in the American crucible.

My grateful acknowledgments are due to the American press a.s.sociations who considered me worthy to be the accredited American correspondent at the British front, and to Collier's and Everybody's; and may an author who has not had the opportunity to read proofs request the reader's indulgence.

FREDERICK PALMER. British Headquarters, France.

My Year Of The War

I

"Le Brave Belge!"

The rush from Monterey, in Mexico, when a telegram said that general European war was inevitable; the run and jump on board the Lusitania at New York the night that war was declared by England against Germany; the Atlantic pa.s.sage on the liner of ineffaceable memory, a suspense broken by fragments of war news by wireless; the arrival in England before the war was a week old; the journey to Belgium in the hope of reaching the scene of action!--as I write, all seem to have the perspective of history, so final are the processes of war, so swift their execution, and so eager is everyone for each day's developments. As one grows older the years seem shorter; but the first year of the Great War is the longest year most of us have ever known.

Le brave Belge! One must be honest about him. The man who lets his heart run away with his judgment does his mind an injustice. A fellow-countryman who was in London and fresh from home in the eighth month of the war, asked me for my views of the relative efficiency of the different armies engaged.

"Do you mean that I am to speak without regard to personal sympathies?" I asked.

"Certainly," he replied.

When he had my opinion he exclaimed:

"You have mentioned them all except the Belgian army. I thought it was the best of all."

"Is that what they think at home?" I asked.

"Yes, of course."

"The Atlantic is broad," I suggested.

This man of affairs, an exponent of the efficiency of business, was a sentimentalist when it came to war, as Anglo-Saxons usually are. The side which they favour--that is the efficient side. When I ventured to suggest that the Belgian army, in a professional sense, was hardly to be considered as an army, it was clear that he had ceased to a.s.sociate my experience with any real knowledge.

In business he was one who saw his rivals, their abilities, the organization of their concerns, and their resources of compet.i.tion with a clear eye. He could say of his best personal friend: "I like him, but he has a poor head for affairs." Yet he was the type who, if he had been a trained soldier, would have been a business man of war who would have wanted a sharp, ready sword in a well-trained hand and to leave nothing to chance in a battle for the right. In Germany, where some of the best brains of the country are given to making war a business, he might have been a soldier who would rise to a position on the staff. In America he was the employer of three thousand men-- a general of civil life.

"But look how the Belgians have fought!" he exclaimed. "They stopped the whole German army for two weeks!"

The best army was best because it had his sympathy. His view was the popular view in America: the view of the heart. America saw the pigmy fighting the giant rather than let him pa.s.s over Belgian soil.

On that day when a gallant young king cried, "To arms!" all his people became gallant to the imagination.

When I think of Belgium's part in the war I always think of the little Belgian dog, the schipperke who lives on the ca.n.a.l boats. He is a home-staying dog, loyal, affectionate, domestic, who never goes out on the tow-path to pick quarrels with other dogs; but let anything on two or four feet try to go on board when his master is away and he will fight with every ounce of strength in him. The King had the schipperke spirit. All the Belgians who had the schipperke spirit tried to sink their teeth in the calves of the invader.

One's heart was with the Belgians on that eighteenth day of August, 1914, when one set out toward the front in a motor-car from a Brussels rejoicing over bulletins of victory, its streets walled with bunting; but there was something brewing in one's mind which was as treason to one's desires. Let Brussels enjoy its flags and its capture of German cavalry patrols while it might!

On the hills back of Louvain we came upon some Belgian troops in their long, c.u.mbersome coats, dark silhouettes against the field, digging shallow trenches in an uncertain sort of way. Whether it was due to the troops or to Belgian staff officers hurrying by in their cars, I had the impression of the will and not the way and a parallel of raw militia in uniforms taken from grandfather's trunk facing the trained antagonists of an Austerlitz, or a Waterloo, or a Gettysburg.

Le brave Beige! The question on that day was not, Are you brave?

but, Do you know how to fight? Also, Would the French and the British arrive in time to help you? Of a thousand rumours about the positions of the French and the British armies, one was as good as another. All the observer knew was that he was an atom in a motor- car and all he saw for the defence of Belgium was a regiment of Belgians digging trenches. He need not have been in Belgium before to realize that here was an unwarlike people, living by intensive thrift and caution--a most domesticated civilization in the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of gra.s.s and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering blast of war.

Out of the Hotel de Ville at Louvain, as our car halted by the cathedral door, came an elderly French officer, walking with a light, quick step, his cloak thrown back over his shoulders, and hurriedly entered a car; and after him came a tall British officer, walking more slowly, imperturbably, as a man who meant to let nothing disturb him or beat him--both characteristic types of race. This was the break-up of the last military conference held at Louvain, which had now ceased to be Belgian Headquarters.

How little you knew and how much they knew! The sight of them was helpful. One was the representative of a force of millions of Frenchman; of the army. I had always believed in the French army, and have more reason now than ever to believe in it. There was no doubt that if a French corps and a German corps were set the task of marching a hundred miles to a strategic position, the French would arrive first and win the day in a pitched battle. But no one knew this better than that German Staff whose superiority, as von Moltke said, would always ensure victory. Was the French army ready? Could it bring the fullness of its strength into the first and perhaps the deciding shock of arms? Where was the French army?

The other officer who came out of the Hotel de Ville was the representative of a little army--a handful of regulars--hard as nails and ready to the last b.u.t.ton. Where was the British army? The restaurant keeper where we had luncheon at Louvain--he knew. He whispered his military secret to me. The British army was toward Antwerp, waiting to crush the Germans in the flank should they advance on Brussels. We were "drawing them on!" Most cheerful, most confident, mine host! When I went back to Louvain under German rule his restaurant was in ruins.

We were on our way to as near the front as we would go, with a pa.s.s which was written for us by a Belgian reservist in Brussels between sips of beer brought him by a boy scout. It was a unique, a most accommodating pa.s.s; the only one I have received from the Allies'

side which would have taken me into the German lines.

The front which we saw was in the square of the little town of Haelen, where some dogs of a dog machine-gun battery lay panting in their traces. A Belgian officer in command there I recollect for his pa.s.sionate repet.i.tion of, "a.s.sa.s.sins! The barbarians!" which seemed to choke out any other words whenever he spoke of the Germans.

His was a fresh, livid hate, born of recent fighting. We could go where we pleased, he said; and the Germans were "out there," not far away.

Very tired he was, except for the flash of hate in his eyes; as tired as the dogs of the machine-gun battery.

We went outside to see the scene of "the battle," as it was called in the dispatches; a field in the first flush of the war, where the headless lances of Belgian and German cavalrymen were still scattered about.

The peasants had broken off the lance-heads for the steel, which was something to pay for the grain smouldering in the barn which had been sh.e.l.led and burned.

A battle! It was a battle because the reporters could get some account of it, and the fighting in Alsace was hidden under the cloud of secrecy. A superficial survey was enough to show that it had been only a reconnaissance by the Germans with some infantry and guns as well as cavalry. Their defeat had been an incident to the thrust of a tiny feeling finger of the German octopus for information. The scouting of the German cavalry patrols here and there had the same object. Waiting behind hedges or sweeping around in the rear of a patrol with their own cavalry when the word came by telephone, the Belgians bagged many a German, man and horse, dead and alive.

Brussels and London and New York, too, thrilled over these exploits supplied to eager readers. It was the Uhlan week of the war; for every German cavalryman was a Uhlan, according to popular conception.

These Uhlans seemed to have more temerity than sense from the accounts that you read. But if one out of a dozen of these mounted youths, with horses fresh and a trooper's zest in the first flush of war, returned to say that he had ridden to such and such points without finding any signs of British or French forces, he had paid for the loss of the others. The Germans had plenty of cavalry. They used it as the eyes of the army, in co-operation with the aerial eyes of the planes.