My Year of the War Part 16

We have sampled all the trenches; we have studied the ruins of Ypres with an archaeologist's eye; we know the names of the estaminets of the villages, from "The Good Farmer" to "The Harvester's Rest" and "The Good Cousin," not to mention "The Omnibus Stop" on the Ca.s.sel Hill. Madame who keeps the hotel in the G.H.Q. town knows me so well that we wave hands to each other as I pa.s.s the door; and the clerks in a certain shop have learned that the American likes his fruit raw, instead of stewed in the English fashion, and plenty of it, especially if it comes from the South out of season, as it does from Florida or California to pampered human beings at home, who, if they could see as much of this war as I have seen, would appreciate what a fortunate lot they are to have not a ribbon of salt.w.a.ter but a broad sea full of it, and the British navy, too, between them and the thing on the other side of the zone of death.

G.H.Q. means General Headquarters and B.E.F., which shows the way for your letters from England, means British Expeditionary Force.

The high leading, the brains of the army, are theoretically at G.H.Q.

That word theoretically is used advisedly in view of opinion at other points. An officer sent from G.H.Q. to command a brigade had not been long out before he began to talk about those confounded one- thing-and-another fellows at G.H.Q. When he was at G.H.Q. he used to talk about those confounded one-thing-and-another fellows who commanded corps, divisions, and brigades at the front. The philosophers of G.H.Q. smiled and the philosophers of the army smiled--it was the old story of the staff and the line; of the main office and the branches. But the line did the most smiling to see the new brigadier getting a taste of his own medicine.

G.H.Q. directs the whole; here every department of all that vast concern which supplies the hundreds of thousands of men and prepares for the other hundreds of thousands is focussed. The symbol of its authority is a red band round the cap, which means that you are a staff officer. No war at G.H.Q., only the driving force of war.

It seems as far removed from the front as the New York office of a string of manufacturing plants.

If one follows a red-banded cap into a door he sees other officers and clerks and typewriters, and a sign which says that a department chief has his desk in the drawing-room of a private house--where he has had it for months. Go to one mess and you will hear talk about garbage pails and how to kill flies; to another, about hospitals and clearing stations for the wounded; to another, about barbed wire, sandbags, spades, timber, and galvanized iron--the engineers; to another, about guns, sh.e.l.ls, rifles, bullets, mortars, bombs, bayonets, and high explosives--the ordnance; to another, about jam, bread, bacon, uniforms, iron rations, socks, underclothes, tinned goods, fresh beef, and motor-trucks--the Army Service Corps; to another, about attacks, counter-attacks, and salients, and about what the others are doing and will have to do--the operations.

The Chief of Staff drives the eight-horse team. He works sixteen hours a day. So do most of the others. This is how you prove to the line that you have a right to be at G.H.Q. When you get to know G.H.Q. it seems like any other business inst.i.tution. Many are there who do not want to be there; but they have been found out. They are specialists, who know how to do one thing particularly well and are kept doing it. No use of growling that you would like a "fighting job."

G.H.Q. is the main station on the road of war, which hears the sound of the guns faintly. Beyond is the region of all the activities that it commands, up to the trenches, where all roads end and all efforts consummate. One has seen dreary flat lands of mud and leafless trees become fair with the spring, the growing harvest reaped, and the leaves begin to fall. Always the factory of war was in the same place; the soldiers billeted in the same towns; the puffs of shrapnel smoke over the same belt of landscape; the ruins of the same villages being pounded by high explosives. Always the sound of guns; always the wastage of life, as pa.s.sing ambulances, the curtains drawn, speed by, their part swiftly and covertly done. The enormity of the thing holds the imagination; its sure and orderly processes of an organized civilization working at destruction win the admiration. There is a thrill in the courage and sacrifice and the drilled readiness of response to orders.

The spectator is under varying spells. To-day he seems in a fantastic world, whose horror makes it impossible of realization. To-morrow, as his car takes him along a pleasant by-road among wheat-fields where peasants are working and no soldier is in sight, it is a world of peace and one thinks that he has mistaken the roar of a train for the distant roar of gun-fire. Again, it seems the most real of worlds, an exclusive man's world, where nothing counts but organized material force, and all those cleanly, well-behaved men in khaki are a part of the permanent population.

One sees the war as a colossal dynamo, where force is perpetual like the energy of the sun. The war is going on for ever. The reaper cuts the harvest, but another harvest comes. War feeds on itself, renews itself. Live men replace the dead. There seems no end to supplies of men. The pounding of the guns, like the roar of Niagara, becomes eternal. Nothing can stop it.

XIV Trenches In Winter

The difference between trench warfare in winter and in summer is that between sleeping on the lawn in March and in July. It was in the mud and winds of March that I first saw the British front. The winds were much like the seasonal winds at home; but the Flanders mud is like no other mud, in the judgment of the British soldier. It is mixed with glue. When I returned to the front in June for a longer stay, the mud had become clouds of dust that trailed behind the motor-car.

In March my eagerness to see a trench was that of one from the Western prairies to get his first glimpse of the ocean. Once I might go into a trench as often as I pleased I became "fed up" with trenches, as the British say. They did not mean much more than an alley or a railway cutting. One came to think of the average peaceful trench as a ditch where some men were eating marmalade and bully beef and looking across a field at some more men who were eating sausage and "K.K." bread, each party taking care that the other did not see him.

Writers have served us trenches in every possible literary style that censorship will permit. Whoever "tours" them is convinced that none of the descriptions published heretofore has been adequate and writes one of his own which will be final. All agree that it is not like what they thought it was. But, despite all the descriptions, the public still fails to visualize a trench. You do not see a trench with your eyes so much as with your mind and imagination. That long line where all the powers of destruction within man's command are in deadlock has become a symbol for something which cannot be expressed by words. No one has yet really described a sh.e.l.l-burst, or a flash of lightning, or Niagara Falls; and no one will ever describe a trench. He cannot put anyone else there. He can only be there himself.

The first time that I looked over a British parapet was in the edge of a wood. Board walks ran across the spongy earth here and there; the doors of little shanties with earth roofs opened on to those streets, which were called Piccadilly and the Strand. I was reminded of a pleasant prospector's camp in Alaska. Only, everybody was in uniform and occasionally something whished through the branches of the trees. One looked up to see what it was and where it was going, this stray bullet, without being any wiser.

We pa.s.sed along one of the walks until we came to a wall of sandbags--simply white bags about three-quarters of the size of an ordinary pillowslip, filled with earth and laid one on top of another like bags of grain. You stood beside a man who had a rifle laid across the top of the pile. Of course, you did not wear a white hat or wave a handkerchief. One does not do that when he plays hide-and-seek.

Or, if you preferred, you might look into a chip of gla.s.s, with your head wholly screened by the wall of sandbags, which got a reflection from another chip of gla.s.s above the parapet. This is the trench periscope; the principle of all of them is the same. They have no more variety than the fashion in knives, forks and spoons on the dinner table.

One hundred and fifty yards away across a dead field was another wall of sandbags. The distance is important. It is always stated in all descriptions. One hundred and fifty yards is not much. Only when you get within forty or fifty yards have you something to brag about. Yet three hundred yards may be more dangerous than fifteen, if an artillery "hate" is on.

Look for an hour, and all you see is the wall of sandbags. Not even a rabbit runs across that dead s.p.a.ce. The situation gets its power of suggestion from the fact that there are Germans behind the other wall--real, live Germans. They are trying to kill the British on our side and we are trying to kill them; and they are as coyly unaccommodating about putting up their heads as we are. The emotion of the situation is in the fact that a sharpshooter might send a shot at your cap; he might smash a periscope; a sh.e.l.l might come. A rifle cracks--that is all. Nearly everyone has heard the sound, which is no different at the front than elsewhere. And the sound is the only information you get.

It is not so interesting as shooting at a deer, for you can tell whether you hit him or not. The man who fires from a trench is not even certain whether he saw a German or not. He shot at some shadow or object along the crest which might have been a German head.

Thus, one must take the word of those present that there is any more life behind than in front of the sandbags. However, if you are sceptical you may have conviction by starting to crawl over the top of the British parapet. After dark the soldiers will slip over and bring back your body. It is this something you do not see, this something visualized by the imagination, which convinces you that you ought to be considerate enough of posterity to write the real description of a trench. Look for an hour at that wall of sandbags and your imagination sees more and more, while your eye sees only sandbags. What does this war mean to you? There it is: only you can describe what this war means to you.

Many a soldier who has spent months in trenches has not seen a German. I boast that I have seen real Germans through my gla.s.ses.

They were walking along a road back of their trenches. It was most fascinating. All the Germans I had ever seen in Germany were not half so interesting. I strained my eyes watching those wonderful beings as I might strain them at the first visiting party from Mars to earth. There must have been at least ten out of the Kaiser's millions.

In summer that wood had become a sylvan bower, or a pastoral paradise, or a leafy nook, as you please. The sun played through the branches in a patchwork; flowers bloomed on the dirt roofs of the shanties, and a swallow had a nest--famous swallow!--on one of the parapets. True, it was not on the front parapet; it was on the reserve.

The swallow knew what he was about. He was taking a reasonable amount of risk and playing reasonably secure to get a front seat, according to the ethics of the war correspondent. The two walls of sandbags were in the same place that they had been six months previously. A little patching had been done after some sh.e.l.ls had hit the mark, though not many had come.

For this was a quiet corner. Neither side was interested in stirring up the hornets' nest. If a member of Parliament wished to see what trench life was like he was brought here, because it was one of the safest places for a few minutes' look at the sandbags which Mr.

Atkins stared at week in and week out. Some Conservatives, however, in the case of Radical members, would have chosen a different kind of trench to show; for example, that one which was suggested to me by the staff officer with the twinkle in his eye on my best day at the front.

In want of an army pa.s.s to the front in order to write your own description, then, put up a wall of sandbags in a vacant lot and another one hundred and fifty yards away and fire a rifle occasionally from your wall at the head of a man on the opposite side, who will shoot at yours--and there you are. If you prefer the realistic to the romantic school and wish to appreciate the nature of trench life in winter, find a piece of wet, flat country, dig a ditch seven or eight feet deep, stand in icy water looking across at another ditch, and sleep in a cellar that you have dug in the wall, and you are near understanding what Mr. Atkins has been doing for his country. The ditch should be cut zigzag in and out, like the lines dividing the squares of a checker-board; that makes more work and localizes the burst of sh.e.l.ls.

Of course, the moist walls will be continually falling in and require mending in a drenching, freezing rain of the kind that the Lord visits on all who wage war underground in Flanders. Incidentally, you must look after the pumps, lest the water rise to your neck. For all the while you are fighting Flanders mud as well as the Germans.

To carry realism to the limit of the Grand Guignol school, then, arrange some bags of bullets with dynamite charges on a wire, which will do for shrapnel; plant some dynamite in the parapet, which will do for high explosive sh.e.l.ls that burst on contact; sink heavier charges of dynamite under your feet, which will do for mines, and set them off, while you engage someone to toss grenades and bombs at you.

Though scores of officers' letters had given their account of trench life with the vividness of personal experience, I must mention my first trench in Flanders in winter when, with other correspondents, I saw the real thing under the guidance of the commanding officer of that particular section, a slight, wiry man who wore the ribbon of the Victoria Cross won in another war for helping to "save the guns." He made seeing trenches in the mud seem a pleasure trip. He was the kind who would walk up to his ball as if he knew how to play golf, send out a clean, fair, long drive, and then use his iron as if he knew how to use an iron, without talking about his game on the way around or when he returned to the club-house. Men could go into danger behind him without realizing that they were in danger; they could share hardship without realizing that there were any hardships. Such as he put faith and backbone into a soldier by their very manner; and if their professional training equal their talents, when war comes they win victories.

We had rubber boots, electric torches, and wore British warms, those short, thick coats which collect a modic.u.m of mud for you to carry besides what you are carrying on your boots. We walked along a hard road in the dark toward an aurora borealis of German flares, which popped into the sky like Roman candles and burst in circles of light. They seemed to be saying: "Come on! Try to crawl up on us and play us a trick and our eyes will find you and our marksmen will stop you. Come on! We make the night into day, and watching never ceases from our parapet."

Occasional rifle-shots and a machine-gun's ter-rut were audible from the direction of the jumping red glare, which stretched right and left as far as the eye could see. We broke off the road into a mora.s.s of mud, as one might cross fields when he had lost his way, and plunged on till the commanding officer said, "We go in here!" and we descended into a black chasm in the earth. The wonder was that any ditch could be cut in soil which the rains had turned into syrup. Mud oozed from the sandbags, through the wire netting, and between the wooden supports which held the walls in place. It was just as bad over in the German trenches. General Mud laid siege to both armies. The field of battle where he gathered his gay knights was a slough. His tug of war was strife against landslides, rheumatism, pneumonia, and frozen feet.

The soldier tries to kill his adversary; he tries to prevent his adversary from killing him. He is as busy in safeguarding as in taking life. While he breathes, thinks, fights mud, he blesses as well as curses mud.

Mother Earth is still unconquerable. In her bosom man still finds security; such security that "dug in" he can defy at a hundred yards'

distance rifles that carry death three thousand yards. She it is that has made the deadlock in the trenches and plastered their occupants with her miry hands.

The C.O. lifted a curtain of bagging as you might lift a hanging over an alcove bookcase, and a young officer, rising from his blankets in his house in the trench wall to a stooping posture, said that all was quiet. His uniform seemed fleckless. Was it possible that he wore some kind of cloth which shed mud spatters? He was another of the type of Captain Q------, my host at Neuve Chapelle; a type formed on the type of seniors such as his C.O. Una.n.a.lysable this quality, but there is something distinguished about it and delightfully appealing. A man who can be the same in a trench in Flanders in mid-winter as in a drawing-room has my admiration. They never lose their manner, these English officers. They carry it into the charge and back in the ambulance with them to England, where they wish nothing so much as that their friends will "cut out the hero stuff," as our own officers say.

In other dank cellars soldiers who were off guard were lying or sitting.

The radiance of the flares lighted the profiles of those on guard, whose faces were half-hidden by coat-collars or ear-flaps-- imperturbable, silent, marooned and marooning, watchful and fearless. The thing had to be done and they were doing it; and they were going to keep on doing it.

There was nothing dry in that trench, unless it was the bowl of a man's pipe. There were not even any braziers. In your nostrils was the odour of the soil of Flanders cultivated by many generations through many wars. As night wore on the sky was brightened by cold, winter stars and their soft light became noticeable between the disagreeable flashes of the flares.

We walked on and on. It was like walking in a winding ditch; that was all. The same kind of walls at every turn; the same kind of dim figures in saturated, heavy army overcoats. Slipping off the board walk into the ooze, one was thrown against the mud wall as his foot sank. Then he held fast to his boot-straps lest the boot remain in the mud while his foot came out. Only the CO. never slipped. He knew how to tour trenches. Beside him the others were as clumsy as if they were trying to walk a tight-rope.

"Good-night!" he said to each group of men as he pa.s.sed, with the cheer of one who brings a confident spirit to vigils in the mud and with that note of affection of the commander who has learned to love his men by the token of ordeals when he saw them hold fast against odds.

"Good-night, sir!" they answered; and in their tone was something which you liked to hear--a finer tribute to the CO. than medals which kings can bestow. It was affection and trust. They were ready to follow him, for they knew that he knew how to lead. I was not surprised when I heard of his promotion, later. I shall not be surprised when I hear of it again. For he had brain and heart and the gift of command.

"Shall we go on or shall we go back?" he asked when we had gone about a mile. "Have you had enough?"

We had, without a dissenting voice. A ditch in the mud, that was all, no matter how much farther we went. So we pa.s.sed out of the trench into a soapy, slippery mud which had been ploughed ground in the autumn, now become lathery with the beat of men's steps. Our party became separated when some foundered and tried to hoist themselves with both boot-straps at once. The CO. called out in order to locate us in the darkness, and the voice of an officer in the trenches cut in, "Keep still! The Germans are only a hundred yards away!"

"Sorry!" whispered the CO. "I ought to have known better."

Then one of the German searchlights that had been swinging its stream of light across the paths of the flares lay its fierce, comet eye on us, glistening on the froth-streaked mud and showing each mud- splashed figure in heavy coat in weird silhouette.

"Standstill!"

That is the order whenever the searchlights come spying in your direction. So we stood still in the mud, looking at one another and wondering. It was the one tense second of the night, which lifted our thoughts out of the mud with the elation of risk. That searchlight was the eye of death looking for a target. With the first crack of a bullet we should have known that we were discovered and that it was no longer good tactics to stand still. We should have dropped on all fours into the porridge. The searchlight swept on. Perhaps Hans at the machine-gun was nodding or perhaps he did not think us worth while.

Either supposition was equally agreeable to us.

We kept moving our mud-poulticed feet forward, with the flares at our backs, till we came to a road where we saw dimly a silent company of soldiers drawn up and behind them the supplies for the trench.

Through the mud and under cover of darkness every bit of barbed wire, every board, every ounce of food, must go up to the moles in the ditch. The searchlights and the flares and the machine-guns waited for the relief. They must be fooled. But in this operation most of the casualties in the average trenches, both British and German, occurred. Without a chance to strike back, the soldier was shot at by an a.s.sa.s.sin in the night.

When the men who had been serving their turn of duty in the trenches came out, a magnet drew their weary steps--cleanliness.