On the Edge of the War Zone Part 12

I could fill a volume with stories about these cats. Don't worry. I shall not.

You ask me if I have a dog. Yes, a big black Caniche named d.i.c.k, a good watch-dog, but too fond of playing. I call him an "india-rubber dog," because when he is demanding' a frolic, or asking to have a stone thrown for him--his idea of happiness--he jumps up and down on his four stiff legs exactly like a toy woolly dog on an elastic.

He is a good dog to walk with, and loves to "go." He is very obedient on the road for that reason--knows if he is naughty he can't go next time.

So now you have the household complete. I'll warrant you won't be content. If you are not, there is no satisfying you. When I pour all my political dreams on paper, and shout on to my machine all my disappointments over the att.i.tude of Washington, you take offence.

So what can I do? I cannot send you letters full of stirring adventures.

I don't have any. I can't write you dramatic things about the war. It is not dramatic here, and that is as strange to me as it seems to be to you.

XVII

October 3, 1915

We have been as near to getting enthusiastically excited as we have since the war began.

Just when everyone had a mind made up that the Allies could not be ready to make their first offensive movement until next spring-- resigned to know that it would not be until after a year and a half, and more, of war that we could see our armies in a position to do more than continue to repel the attacks of the enemy--we all waked up on September 27 to the unexpected news that an offensive movement of the French in Champagne had actually begun on the 25th, and was successful.

For three or four days the suspense and the hope alternated. Every day there was an advance, an advance that seemed to be supported by the English about Loos, and all the time we heard at intervals the far-off pounding of the artillery.

For several days our hearts were high. Then there began to creep into the papers hints that it had been a gallant advance, but not a great victory, and far too costly, and that there had been blunders, and we all settled back with the usual philosophy, studied the map of our first-line trenches on September 25, when the attack began,-- running through Souain and Perthes, Mesnil, Ma.s.siges, and Ville sur Tourbe. We compared it with the line on the night of September 29, when the battle practically ended, running from the outskirts of Auderive in the west to behind Cernay in the east, and took what comfort we could in the 25 kilometres of advance, and three hilltops gained. It looked but a few steps on the map, but it was a few steps nearer the frontier.

Long before you get this, you will have read, in the American papers, details hidden from us, though we know more about this event than about most battles.

You remember the tea-party I had for the boys in our ambulance in June? Well, among the soldiers here that day was a chap named Litigue. He was wounded--his second time--on September 25, the first day of the battle. He was nursed in our ambulance the first time by Mlle. Henriette, and yesterday she had a letter from him, which she lets me translate for you, because it will give you some idea of the battle, of the spirit of the poilus, and also because it contains a bit of news and answers a question you asked me several weeks ago, after the first use of gas attacks in the north.

A l'hopital St. Andre de Luhzac,

September 30, 1915 Mademoiselle,

I am writing you tonight a little more at length than I was able to do this morning--then I had not the time, as my nurse was waiting beside my bed to take the card to the post. I wrote it the moment I was able, at the same time that I wrote to my family. I hope it reached you.

I am going to tell you in as few words as possible, how the day pa.s.sed. The attack began the 25th, at exactly quarter past nine in the morning. The preparatory bombardment had been going on since the 22d. All the regiments had been a.s.sembled the night before in their shelters, ready to leap forward.

At daybreak the bombardment recommenced--a terrible storm of sh.e.l.ls of every calibre--bombs, torpedoes--flew overhead to salute the Boches, and to complete the destruction which had been going on for three days.

Without paying attention to the few obus which the Boches sent over in reply to our storm, we all mounted the parapets to get a view of the scene. All along our front, in both directions, all we could see was a thick cloud of dust and smoke. For four hours we stood there, without saying a word, waiting the order to advance; officers, common soldiers, young and old, had but one thought,--to get into it and be done with it as quickly as possible. It was just nine o'clock when the officers ordered us into line, ready to advance,--sac au dos, bayonets fixed, musettes full of grenades and asphyxiating bombs. Everyone of us knew that he was facing death out there, but I saw nowhere the smallest sign of shrinking, and at quarter past nine, when we got the signal to start, one cry: "En avant, et vive la France!" burst from thousands and thousands of throats, as we leaped out of the trenches, and it seemed to me that it was but one bound before we were on them.

Once there I seem to remember nothing in detail. It was as if, by enchantment, that I found myself in the midst of the struggle, in heaps of dead and dying. When I fell, and found myself useless in the fight, I dragged myself, on my stomach, towards our trenches. I met stretcher-bearers who were willing to carry me, but I was able to crawl, and so many of my comrades were worse off, that I refused. I crept two kilometres like that until I found a dressing-station. I was suffering terribly with the bullet in my ankle. They extracted it there and dressed the ankle, but I remained, stretched on the ground, two days before I was removed, and I had nothing to eat until I reached here yesterday--four days after I fell. But that could not be helped.

There were so many to attend to.

I will let you know how I get on, and I hope for news from you. In the meantime I send you my kindest regards, and my deep grat.i.tude.

Your big friend,

LlTIGUE, A.

I thought you might be interested to see what sort of a letter a real poilu writes, and Litigue is just a big workman, young and energetic.

You remember you asked me if the Allies would ever bring themselves to replying in sort to the gas attacks. You see what Litigue says so simply. They did have asphyxiating bombs. Naturally the most honorable army in the world cannot neglect to reply in sort to a weapon like that. When the Boches have taken some of their own medicine the weapon will be less freely used. Besides, today our men are all protected against gas.

I had hardly settled down to the feeling that the offensive was over and that there was another long winter of inaction--a winter of the same physical and material discomforts as the first--lack of fuel, suspense,--when the news came which makes my feeling very personal. The British offensive in the north has cost me a dear friend.

You remember the young English officer who had marched around me in September of last year, during the days preceding the battle of the Marne? He was killed in Belgium on the morning of September 26--the second day of the offensive. He was in command of an anti- aeroplane battery advanced in the night to what was considered a well-concealed position. The German guns, however, got the range.

Shrapnel nearly wiped out the command, and the Captain was wounded in the head. He died at the hospital at Etaples half an hour after he arrived, and lies buried in the English cemetery on the dunes, with his face towards the country for which he gave his young life.

I know one must not today regret such sacrifices. Death is--and no one can die better than actively for a great cause. But, when a loved one goes out in youth; when a career of achievement before which a really brilliant future opened, is snapped, one can still be proud, but it is through a veil of tears.

I remember so well that Sunday morning, the 26th of September. It was a beautiful day. The air was clear. The sun shone. I sat all the morning on the lawn watching the clouds, so small and fleecy, and listening to the far-off cannon, not knowing then that it meant the "big offensive." Oddly enough we spoke of him, for Amelie was examining the cherry tree, which she imagined had some sort of malady, and she said: "Do you remember when Captain Noel was here last year how he climbed the tree to pick the cherries?" And I replied that the tree hardly looked solid enough now to bear his weight. I sat thinking of him, and his life of movement and activity under so many climes, and wondered where he was, little thinking that already, that very morning, the sun of his dear life was told, and that we should never, as I had dreamed, talk over his adventures in France as we had so often talked over those in India, in China, and in Africa.

It is odd, but when a friend so dear as he was, yet whom one only saw rarely, in the etapes of his active career, goes out across the great bourne, into the silence and the invisible, it takes time to realize it. It is only after a long waiting, when not even a message comes back, that one comprehends that there are to be no more meetings at the cross-roads. I moved one more portrait into the line under the flags tied with black--that was all.

You hardly knew him, I know, but no one ever saw his upright figure, his thin, clear-cut features, bronzed by tropic suns, and his direct gaze, and forgot him.

XVIII

December 6, 1915

It is two months since I wrote--I know it. But you really must not reproach me so violently as you do in yours of the 21st of November, just received.

To begin with, there is no occasion for you to worry. I may be uncomfortable. I am in no danger. As for the discomforts--well, I am used to them. I cannot get coal very often, and when I do I pay twenty-six dollars a ton for it, and it is only imitation coal, at that. I cannot get washing done oftener than once in six weeks. Nothing dries out-of-doors in this country of damp winters. I am often forced to live my evenings by candle-light, which is pretty extravagant, as candles are costly, and it takes a good many to get through an evening. They burn down like paper tapers in these days.

When I don't write it is simply because I have nothing more interesting than things like that to tell you. The situation is chronic, and, like chronic diseases, much more likely to get worse than to get better.

You should be grateful to me for sparing you, instead of blaming me.

I might not have found the inspiration to write today if something had not happened.

This morning the town crier beat his drum all over the hill, and read a proclamation forbidding all foreigners to leave the commune during the next thirty days without a special permit from the general in command of the 5th Army Corps.

No one knows what this means. I have been to the mairie to enquire simply because I had promised to spend Christmas at Voulangis, and, if this order is formal, I may have difficulty in going. I have no desire to celebrate, only there is a child there, and the lives of little children ought not to be too much saddened by the times and events they do not understand.

I was told at the mairie that they had no power, and that I would have to address myself to Monsieur le General. They could not even tell me what form the request ought to take. So I came home, and wrote the letter as well as I could.

In the meantime, I am distinctly informed that until I get a reply from headquarters I cannot go out of the commune of Quincy-Segy.

If I really obey the letter of this order I cannot even go to Amelie's. Her house is in the commune of Couilly, and mine in Quincy, and the boundary line between the two communes is the path beside my garden, on the south side, and runs up the middle of my road from that point.