With the French in France and Salonika Part 10

The French marquis who escorted "Mon Capitaine" of the Grand Quartier General des Armees, who was my "guide philosopher and friend," to the trenches either had built this railroad, or owned a controlling interest in it, for he always spoke of it proudly as "my express," "my special train," "my pet.i.te vitesse." He had lately been in America buying cavalry horses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph, copyright by Medem Photo Service._

"Through these woods ran a toy railroad."

This picture shows President Poincare on the toy railroad en route to the trenches.]

As for years he has owned one of the famous racing stables in France, his knowledge of them is exceptional.

When last I had seen him he was in silk, on one of his own thoroughbreds, and the crowd, or that part of it that had backed his horse, was applauding, and, while he waited for permission to dismount, he was smiling and laughing. Yesterday, when the plough horses pulled his express-train off the rails, he descended and pushed it back, and, in consequence, was splashed, not by the mud of the race-track but of the trenches. Nor in the misty, dripping, rain-soaked forest was there any one to applaud. But he was still laughing, even more happily.

The trenches were dug around what had been a chalk mine, and it was difficult to tell where the mining for profit had stopped and the excavations for defense began. When you can see only chalk at your feet, and chalk on either hand, and overhead the empty sky, this ignorance may be excused. In the boyaux, which began where the railroad stopped, that was our position. We walked through an endless grave with walls of clay, on top of which was a scant foot of earth. It looked like a layer of chocolate on the top of a cake.

In some places, underfoot was a corduroy path of sticks, like the false bottom of a rowboat; in others, we splashed through open sluices of clay and rain-water. You slid and skidded, and to hold yourself erect pressed with each hand against the wet walls of the endless grave.

We came out upon the "hauts de Meuse." They are called also the "Sh.o.r.es of Lorraine," because to that province, as are the cliffs of Dover to the county of Kent, they form a natural barrier. We were in the quarry that had been cut into the top of the heights on the side that now faces other heights held by the enemy. Behind us rose a sheer wall of chalk as high as a five-story building. The face of it had been pounded by sh.e.l.ls. It was as undismayed as the whitewashed wall of a schoolroom at which generations of small boys have flung impertinent spit-b.a.l.l.s. At the edge of the quarry the floor was dug deeper, leaving a wall between it and the enemy, and behind this wall were the posts of observation, the nests of the machine-guns, the raised step to which the men spring when repulsing an attack. Below and back of them were the shelters into which, during a bombardment, they disappear. They were roofed with great beams, on top of which were bags of cement piled three and four yards high.

Not on account of the sleet and fog, but in spite of them, the aspect of the place was grim and forbidding. You did not see, as at some of the other fronts, on the sign-boards that guide the men through the maze, jokes and nicknames. The mess-huts and sleeping-caves bore no such ironic t.i.tles as the Pet.i.t Cafe, the Anti-Boche, Chez Maxim. They were designated only by numerals, businesslike and brief. It was no place for humor. The monuments to the dead were too much in evidence. On every front the men rise and lie down with death, but on no other front had I found them living so close to the graves of their former comrades. Where a man had fallen, there had he been buried, and on every hand you saw between the chalk huts, at the mouths of the pits or raised high in a niche, a pile of stones, a cross, and a soldier's cap. Where one officer had fallen his men had built to his memory a mausoleum. It is also a shelter into which, when the sh.e.l.ls come, they dive for safety. So that even in death he protects them.

I was invited into a post of observation, and told to make my entrance quickly. In order to exist, a post of observation must continue to look to the enemy only like part of the wall of earth that faces him. If through its apparently solid front there flashes, even for an instant, a ray of sunlight, he knows that the ray comes through a peep-hole, and that behind the peep-hole men with field-gla.s.ses are watching him. And with his sh.e.l.ls he hammers the post of observation into a shambles.

Accordingly, when you enter one, it is etiquette not to keep the door open any longer than is necessary to squeeze past it. As a rule, the door is a curtain of sacking, but hands and bodies coated with clay, by brushing against it, have made it quite opaque.

The post was as small as a chart-room, and the light came only through the peep-holes. You got a glimpse of a rack of rifles, of shadowy figures that made way for you, and of your captain speaking in a whisper. When you put your eyes to the peep-hole it was like looking at a photograph through a stereoscope. But, instead of seeing the lake of Geneva, the Houses of Parliament, or Niagara Falls, you looked across a rain-driven valley of mud, on the opposite side of which was a hill.

Here the reader kindly will imagine a page of printed matter devoted to that hill. It was an extremely interesting hill, but my captain, who also is my censor, decides that what I wrote was too interesting, especially to Germans. So the hill is "strafed." He says I can begin again vaguely with "Over there."

"Over there," said his voice in the darkness, "is St. Mihiel."

For more than a year you had read of St. Mihiel. Communiques, maps, ill.u.s.trations had made it famous and familiar. It was the town that gave a name to the German salient, to the point thrust in advance of what should be his front. You expected to see an isolated hill, a promontory, some position of such strategic value as would explain why for St.

Mihiel the lives of thousands of Germans had been thrown upon the board.

But except for the obstinacy of the German mind, or, upon the part of the Crown Prince the lack of it, I could find no explanation. Why the German wants to hold St. Mihiel, why he ever tried to hold it, why if it so pleases him he should not continue to hold it until his whole line is driven across the border, is difficult to understand. For him it is certainly an expensive position. It lengthens his lines of communication and increases his need of transport. It eats up men, eats up rations, eats up priceless ammunition, and it leads to nowhere, enfilades no position, threatens no one. It is like an ill-mannered boy sticking out his tongue. And as ineffective.

The physical aspect of St. Mihiel is a broad sweep of meadow-land cut in half by the Meuse flooding her banks; and the shattered houses of the Ferme Mont Meuse, which now form the point of the salient. At this place the opposing trenches are only a hundred yards apart, and all of this low ground is commanded by the French guns on the heights of Les Paroches. On the day of our visit they were being heavily bombarded. On each side of the salient are the French. Across the battle-ground of St. Mihiel I could see their trenches facing those in which we stood.

For, at St. Mihiel, instead of having the line of the enemy only in front, the lines face the German, and surround him on both flanks.

Speaking not as a military strategist but merely as a partisan, if any German commander wants that kind of a position I would certainly make him a present of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph, copyright by Underwood and Underwood._

A first-line trench outside of Verdun.

The trench enfilades the valley beyond, and the valley is covered with barbed-wire and gun-pits.]

The colonel who commanded the trenches possessed an enthusiasm that was beautiful to see. He was as proud of his chalk quarry as an admiral of his first dreadnaught. He was as isolated as though cast upon a rock in mid-ocean. Behind him was the dripping forest, in front the mud valley filled with floating fogs. At his feet in the chalk floor the sh.e.l.ls had gouged out holes as deep as rain-barrels. Other sh.e.l.ls were liable at any moment to gouge out more holes. Three days before, when Prince Arthur of Connaught had come to tea, a sh.e.l.l had hit outside the colonel's private cave, and smashed all the teacups. It is extremely annoying when English royalty drops in sociably to distribute medals and sip a cup of tea to have German sh.e.l.ls invite themselves to the party. It is a way German sh.e.l.ls have. They push in everywhere. One invited itself to my party and got within ten feet of it. When I complained, the colonel suggested absently that it probably was not a German sh.e.l.l but a French mine that had gone off prematurely. He seemed to think being hit by a French mine rather than by a German sh.e.l.l made all the difference in the world. It nearly did.

At the moment the colonel was greatly interested in the fact that one of his men was not carrying a mask against gases. The colonel argued that the life of the man belonged to France, and that through laziness or indifference he had no right to risk losing it. Until this war the colonel had commanded in Africa the regiment into which criminals are drafted as a punishment. To keep them in hand requires both imagination and the direct methods of a bucko mate on a whaler. When the colonel was promoted to his present command he found the men did not place much confidence in the gas masks, so he filled a shelter with poisoned air, equipped a squad with protectors and ordered them to enter. They went without enthusiasm, but when they found they could move about with impunity the confidence of the entire command in the anti-gas masks was absolute.

The colonel was very vigilant against these gas attacks. He had equipped the only shelter I have seen devoted solely to the preparation of defenses against them. We learned several new facts concerning this hideous form of warfare. One was that the Germans now launch the gas most frequently at night when the men cannot see it approach, and, in consequence, before they can snap the masks into place, they are suffocated, and in great agony die. They have learned much about the gas, but chiefly by bitter experience. Two hours after one of the attacks an officer seeking his field-gla.s.ses descended into his shelter.

The gas that had flooded the trenches and then floated away still lurked below. And in a moment the officer was dead. The warning was instantly flashed along the trenches from the North Sea to Switzerland, and now after a gas raid, before any one enters a shelter, it is attacked by counter-irritants, and the poison driven from ambush.

I have never seen better discipline than obtained in that chalk quarry, or better spirit. There was not a single outside element to aid discipline or to inspire morale. It had all to come from within. It had all to spring from the men themselves and from the example set by their officers. The enemy fought against them, the elements fought against them, the place itself was as cheerful as a crutch. The clay climbed from their feet to their hips, was ground into their uniforms, clung to their hands and hair. The rain chilled them, the wind, cold, damp, and harsh, stabbed through their greatcoats. Their outlook was upon graves, their resting-places dark caverns, at which even a wolf would look with suspicion. And yet they were all smiling, eager, alert. In the whole command we saw not one sullen or wistful face.

It is an old saying: "So the colonel, so the regiment."

But the splendid spirit I saw on the heights of the Meuse is true not only of that colonel and of that regiment, but of the whole five hundred miles of trenches, and of all France.

February, 1916.

When I was in Verdun, the Germans, from a distance of twenty miles, had dropped three sh.e.l.ls into Nancy and threatened to send more. That gave Nancy an interest which Verdun lacked. So I was intolerant of Verdun and anxious to hasten on to Nancy.

To-day Nancy and her three sh.e.l.ls are forgotten, and to all the world the place of greatest interest is Verdun. Verdun has been Roman, Austrian, and not until 1648 did she become a part of France. This is the fourth time she has been attacked--by the Prussians in 1792, again by the Germans in 1870, when, after a gallant defense of three weeks, she surrendered, and in October of 1914.

She then was more menaced than attacked. It was the Crown Prince and General von Strantz with seven army corps who threatened her. General Sarrail, now commanding the allied forces in Salonika, with three army corps, and reinforced by part of an army corps from Toul, directed the defense. The attack was made upon Fort Troyon, about twenty miles south of Verdun. The fort was destroyed, but the Germans were repulsed. Four days later, September 24, the real attack was made fifteen miles south of Troyon, on the village of St. Mihiel. The object of Von Strantz was to break through the Verdun-Toul line, to inclose Sarrail from the south and at Revigny link arms with the Crown Prince. They then would have had the army of Sarrail surrounded.

For several days it looked as though Von Strantz would succeed, but, though outnumbered, Sarrail's line held, and he forced Von Strantz to "dig in" at St. Mihiel. There he still is, like a dagger that has failed to reach the heart but remains implanted in the flesh.

Von Strantz having failed, a week later, on October 3, the Crown Prince attacked through the Forest of the Argonne between Varennes and Verdun.

But this a.s.sault also was repulsed by Sarrail, who captured Varennes, and with his left joined up with the Fourth Army of General Langle. The line as then formed by that victory remained much as it is to-day. The present attack is directed neither to the north nor south of Verdun, but straight at the forts of the city. These forts form but a part of the defenses. For twenty miles in front of Verdun have been spread trenches and barb-wire. In turn, these are covered by artillery positions in the woods and on every height. Even were a fort destroyed, to occupy it the enemy must pa.s.s over a terrain, every foot of which is under fire. As the defense of Verdun has been arranged, each of the forts is but a rallying-point--a base. The actual combat that will decide the struggle will be fought in the open.

Last month I was invited to one of the Verdun forts. It now lies in the very path of the drive, and to describe it would be improper. But the approaches to it are now what every German knows. They were more impressive even than the fort. The "glacis" of the fort stretched for a mile, and as we walked in the direction of the German trenches there was not a moment when from every side French guns could not have blown us into fragments. They were mounted on the spurs of the hills, sunk in pits, ambushed in the thick pine woods. Every step forward was made cautiously between trenches, or through mazes of barb-wire and iron hurdles with bayonet-like spikes. Even walking leisurely you had to watch your step. Pits opened suddenly at your feet, and strands of barbed-wire caught at your clothing. Whichever way you looked trenches flanked you. They were dug at every angle, and were not farther than fifty yards apart.

On one side, a half mile distant, was a hill heavily wooded. At regular intervals the trees had been cut down and uprooted and, like a wood-road, a cleared s.p.a.ce showed. These were the nests of the "seventy-fives." They could sweep the approaches to the fort as a fire-hose flushes a gutter. That a human being should be ordered to advance against such pitfalls and obstructions, and under the fire from the trenches and batteries, seemed sheer murder. Not even a cat with nine lives could survive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A valley in Argonne showing a forest destroyed by sh.e.l.ls.

Owing to the attack on the Verdun sector, it is again under fire.]

The German papers tell that before the drive upon Verdun was launched the German Emperor reproduced the attack in miniature. The whereabouts and approaches to the positions they were to take were explained to the men. Their officers were rehea.r.s.ed in the part each was to play. But no rehearsal would teach a man to avoid the pitfalls that surround Verdun.

The open places are as treacherous as quicksands, the forests that seem to him to offer shelter are a succession of traps. And if he captures one fort he but brings himself under the fire of two others.

From what I saw of the defenses of Verdun from a "certain place" three miles outside the city to a "certain place" fifteen miles farther south, from what the general commanding the Verdun sector told me, and from what I know of the French, I believe the Crown Prince will find this second attack upon Verdun a hundred per cent more costly than the first, and equally unsuccessful.

CHAPTER X

WAR IN THE VOSGES

PARIS, January, 1916.

When speaking of their five hundred miles of front, the French General Staff divide it into twelve sectors. The names of these do not appear on maps. They are family names and t.i.tles, not of certain places, but of districts with imaginary boundaries. These nicknames seem to thrive best in countries where the same race of people have lived for many centuries. With us, it is usually when we speak of mountains, as "in the Rockies," "in the Adirondacks," that under one name we merge rivers, valleys, and villages. To know the French names for the twelve official fronts may help in deciphering the communiques. They are these:

Flanders, the first sector, stretches from the North Sea to beyond Ypres; the Artois sector surrounds Arras; the centre of Picardie is Amiens; Santerre follows the valley of the Oise; Soissonais is the sector that extends from Soissons on the Aisne to the Champagne sector, which begins with Rheims and extends southwest to include Chalons; Argonne is the forest of Argonne; the Hauts de Meuse, the district around Verdun; Woevre lies between the heights of the Meuse and the River Moselle; then come Lorraine, the Vosges, all hills and forests, and last, Alsace, the territory won back from the enemy.

Of these twelve fronts, I was on ten. The remaining two I missed through leaving France to visit the French fronts in Serbia and Salonika.