As we hiked along at the General's favorite pacePage 71"AS WE HIKED ALONG AT THE GENERAL'S FAVORITE PACE"
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"AS WE HIKED ALONG AT THE GENERAL'S FAVORITE PACE"
A heavy field-piece standing on treadled wheelsPage 72"A HEAVY FIELD-PIECE STANDING ON TREADLED WHEELS"
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"A HEAVY FIELD-PIECE STANDING ON TREADLED WHEELS"
"That gun," explained the General, "is aimed at the village of ——, about eight kilometres distant, behind the German lines. Their reserves have to pass through the village to reach the front; so whenever we hear that they are bringing up their reserves we start this gun shelling that little village. Usually an important village is shared by several guns, butthat village is the particular property of this gun.
"Show the gentlemen how it works," he ordered. The artillerymen leaped into position, swung open the breach, lifted a heavy shell, and thrust it into the chamber.
"Careful there; don't shoot it off!" exclaimed the General, and added to me, "There's no use damaging our own French villages more than is indispensable."
As tenderly as a thoroughbred is blanketed after a race the big gun was bundled up again by its crew, and, leaving them to resume their picnicking under the pine-tree, we strode away to the shooting-box and the lunch.
And a very excellent lunch it was to which the General, some eight of his staff-officers and our party of four sat down in the dingy old dining-room of the shooting-box.
"You certainly mobilized an excellent chef," laughed Captain d'A—— as we reached the entrée.
MENUdu 1º Août 1915
DÉJEUNER
DÉJEUNER
Hors-d'oeuvresOeufs pochés à la RossiniTournedos grillés à la BouchèrePommes fritesPigeons rotisHaricots verts à l'anglaiseCrème au chocolatCompote de pèchesDessert
With white wine mixed with water to drink during the lunch, champagne served in the French fashion with the dessert, and cigars, coffee and liqueurs to follow, the commissariatdepartment undoubtedly deserved congratulations.
The conversation was of course not for publication, but one passage I think I can repeat without fear of violating confidence.
"Why did not Von Kluck march on Paris when he had the chance?" I asked the officer who was sitting on one side of me.
"I will tell you," he replied. "In the 1913 'Kriegsspiel' [great manœuvres] in Germany the theoretical invasion of France by the attacking armies was precisely the same advance as in actual fact they made the following year. In the maneuvers Von Kluck commanded the right wing precisely as he did in the actual invasion. In these maneuvers he came to a point in his advance where he had to choose between attacking Paris and swinging past Paris in pursuit of the enemy. He decided to attack Paris. The verdict of the board of generals who were judging the maneuvers contained the severest kind of arraignment of Von Kluck for having violated the cardinal principal of German military strategy by allowing a mere geographical point to divert him from the one paramount object of German generalship—theenemy's army. We actually possess a copy of this official reprimand, for 'tout s'achête' (there is nothing that money will not buy), you know. Now when little over one year later Von Kluck in actual warfare came face to face with precisely the same choice of alternatives, with the previous year's censure still stingingly fresh in mind, he ignored Paris and followed the enemy army."
Luncheon over, we bade the splendid young General and his staff good-bye, and motored quite a distance to visit one of the French field hospitals. The wounded, after having first aid applied in the trenches, were brought here in ambulances, where their wounds were thoroughly dressed or operations performed. When there was a great rush of wounded those capable of standing the journey were shipped on to base hospitals as quickly as possible to make room for the new cases. During the last few months, however, there had been so little hard fighting on the section of the front which this hospital served, that many of the wounded had been kept there for weeks and some for months. The big rooms on the ground floor of the large country house in which the hospital had beenlocated, had been converted into wards for the wounded privates, while the bedrooms on the upper floor were reserved principally for officers.
It was curious to hear the deprecatory tone in which the Chief Surgeon regretted that he had no freshly wounded to bandage or operate on for our benefit. In fact from the front hospitals to the great base hospitals of Paris the surgeons are all alike. They cannot keep a professional note of regret out of their voices when explaining that very few wounded have come in of late, nor a professional note of encouragement when they understand an important action is soon to be fought which will again fill their cots with "cases." It would be an outrage to hold this attitude against these splendid men. If they had not become impregnated by their professional point of view toward the horrors of their work, they would all long ago have been in madhouses.
Our whole progress through the hospital was a strange conglomeration of pathos and farce. For the Surgeon in Command, on our being introduced to him, stated that he was the proud possessor of an orderly who spoke theEnglish tongue "à merveille." Our staff-officers politely indicated to him that our own French, though not perhaps up to Comédie Française standards, was no mean thing, and would render his explanations entirely comprehensible to us. But these hints were of no avail. The accomplishments of his linguistic prodigy must not be wasted. So the orderly was produced and turned out to be master of the most grotesquely unintelligible English that I have ever listened to.
As we passed between the lines of cots, each with its still figure huddled under its gray blanket, as we were followed about by the wondering gaze of the many eyes which look so incredibly large in the wasted faces of the wounded, we had to listen to the explanations of the Chief Surgeon, and then lend our ears to the burblings of the orderly exterpreting them for our benefit. Even when we stood in the modest little graveyard where those who had died of their wounds were buried we were torn between tears and grins by the attentions of the excellent man whom, I am ashamed to say, Eyre and I had christened "the pest," and by the embarrassed writhings of our staff-officerswho spoke such excellent English that they thoroughly realized the situation.
Having spent perhaps three-quarters of an hour in the hospital, which, judged by the somewhat unexacting French standards, seemed efficiently run, we departed for the first impromptu engagement of the day—the studies of a class in grenade-throwing, which met not very far from the hospital, and which I have elsewhere described in detail.
After an hour devoted to this exceedingly interesting experience, we were whirled away to a distant appointment with another General of an Army Corps. He led us to the flat roof of his headquarters, from which at some distance he pointed out a third installment of the trenches continuing from about the point where they had that morning run out of sight, and from that point stretching along the Craonne plateau, nearly to Soissons.
Having terminated a fifteen-minute meeting with this extremely courteous General, the next number on our programme was the inspection of an aviation "esquadrille" or squadron.
On our way, however, we stopped unexpectedly to look at a most beautiful newanti-aircraft "seventy-five," a gun numbers of which the French had just completed and were bringing to the front. As I was not allowed to photograph the gun even from a distance and was enjoined to regard its details as absolutely confidential, I can only say that, mounted on its own motor, it could travel along the roads at forty kilometres an hour; that it could be in action within one minute and a half after coming to a stop, and that the way the turning of a couple of little cranks which a child could whirl made the heavy muzzle swing, and mount, and cut figure eights in the air, was something wholly incredible.
We listened to a technical but most interesting exposition by the Artillery Captain of the most up-to-date methods of firing at aeroplanes, including the progressive and retrogressive systems, and then sped away to the aviation field some ten or fifteen kilometres distant. We found the aviation squadron on a very large field near the top of a gradually sloping bare hill, comfortably installed, the machines in their great hangars, the aviators in their small tents. The whole organization was especially adapted for mobility. In one hour, at need,the field would have left on it not a man, a stick or a shred of the encampment. Hangars and tents would be careering along some highroad, neatly folded in the big aviation lorries that stood handy, mechanics would be sitting on the box seats or have their legs dangling over the tail-boards, while pilots and observers would waft themselves more comfortably by air to their new camp site.
The Captain of the "esquadrille" showed us, with quite pardonable pride, his "avions de réglage"—planes carrying no bombs or machine-guns, but equipped with wireless, which are used to correct the fire of artillery, and his "avions de chasse" or hunting-planes equipped with bombs, a machine-gun and a Winchester carbine. Some of these had the pilot sit behind and the observer in front operating the machine gun over the bow. Others had the pilot in front and the observer behind, in which case the observer, standing up, operated the machine-gun over the head of the pilot. Finally he showed us a splendid new Caudron biplane having two independent motors and two traction screws in front, so that if either motor were put out ofbusiness the plane could continue flying on the other.
I was so enthusiastic about this machine that the Aviation Captain turned to me and asked casually, "Would you perhaps like to go up and take a 'petite promenade' in the Caudron?"
Would I? It did not take me many fractions of a second to impress on him that I certainly would. But here Captain d'A—— demurred. It was, he said, absolutely forbidden that any one should go up in army aeroplanes except aviators on military duty. Those were the strict army regulations. He was quite right and entirely justified in his attitude. But Captain F——, who was a good sport and had become quite a chum of mine, said, "Oh, let him go up. After all, the Swiss Military Attaché went up the other day. I'll take the responsibility." And as he was in immediate authority while we remained with the 5th Army, Captain d'A—— good-naturedly shrugged his shoulders and let it go at that.
So I hurried down with the Aviation Captain to his tent to put on a warm aviation suit, while the Caudron was prepared for our flight.As we approached his tent, a single-motored aeroplane took aboard its pilot and observer, its propellers whirred and roared, and it rolled casually away up the gradual slope, through a field of standing grain, till near the hilltop it took to the air as easily as a bird and spiralled up toward the low-lying dark clouds.
In the Captain's tent I struggled into a heavy suit of black fur made like a suit of combination underwear, legs and body all in one piece, put on a pair of goggles and a heavily padded helmet, and emerged to meet the disappointment of my life. Down pattered some drops of rain, down spiralled the aeroplane which had just gone up.
"Too bad," said the Aviation Captain. "I can't send a machine up in the rain."
I pleaded with my staff-officers to wait here for an hour to see whether the rain might not stop. In vain. Even that good sport Captain F—— was adamant. We could not possibly wait, because it would completely throw out a visit to a horse hospital, and an inspection of an army corps supply-train which were both unalterably fixed upon our schedule. We were very late already. We must be off.
Well, then, could we not return early to-morrow morning to get the flight?
"Malheureusement ça ne peut pas se faire." (French euphemism for "No.") To-morrow morning I was slated for a visit to a base hospital which, including motoring there and motoring back, would consume most of the morning.
But I would infinitely prefer to go for a "petite promenade" in the Caudron than to inspect the most unique base hospital in the world.
Yes, they could understand that perfectly, but unfortunately the hospital was among "the arrangements" and the "petite promenade" was not. Personally they would throw the hospital overboard in a minute, but the matter was beyond their control.
Part of the enormous encampment of supply-wagonsPage 85PART OF THE ENORMOUS ENCAMPMENT OF SUPPLY-WAGONS,WHICH CARRY THE COMPLETE SUPPLIES FOR THREE FULLDAYS FOR ONE ARMY CORPS
Page 85PART OF THE ENORMOUS ENCAMPMENT OF SUPPLY-WAGONS,WHICH CARRY THE COMPLETE SUPPLIES FOR THREE FULLDAYS FOR ONE ARMY CORPS
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PART OF THE ENORMOUS ENCAMPMENT OF SUPPLY-WAGONS,
WHICH CARRY THE COMPLETE SUPPLIES FOR THREE FULL
DAYS FOR ONE ARMY CORPS
So off we went, Captain F—— full of sympathy and I full of sulks, and at about half past five visited what under other circumstances would have been an exceedingly interesting big hospital full of hundreds of sick and wounded horses. But I fear I was in no mood to appreciate the ingenuity and thoroughness with which the kilometre or more of hospital sheds had been constructed by the soldiers on a framework ofpoles, with wicker-work sides covered with a sort of adobe, and a sloping roof of thatched straw with little gables built here and there for the mere love of beautifying which is apparently ever present in the French race, whether at war or peace.
On we went for another long run till we reached the enormous encampment of supply-wagons, which carry the complete supplies for three full days for one army corps. They had been there since the armies dug themselves in.
"We are not useful now," the Colonel in Command regretfully confided to me; "for almost all the supplies reach our armies by rail. But only wait till the advance begins. Then we shall show what we can do."
This great encampment which covered some square miles of countryside had begun as a bivouac and ended as a town. One walked down avenues and side streets solidly flanked by the huts which this army had built itself. They were all more or less standardized in building materials—wattled walls covered with clay, and thatched straw roofs. But there the uniformity abruptly ended. For these little houses had not been merely constructed bybuilders as they would have been in nearly any other country. This was France and they had been conceived by architects. And each house expressed the original conception of the soldier-architect who had designed it.
No one who has not walked through this mushroom town or the many others like it can imagine the infinite variety of architectural forms which can be wrought in one-story shacks of wattle, clay and straw. The pliable wattle and claylentthemselves to effects which could not have been possible in stone, brick or wood. Extraordinary bays and alcoves, never before dreamed of by the Ecole des Beaux Arts gave light and shadow to long walls. Bas-relief and high-relief were done with spirit and often with fine art in the clay which covered the wattled walls, the thatched straw of the roofs was erected into strange gables, dormer windows, turrets and machicolations. Eccentric, grotesque many of these experiments unquestionably were, but they meant on the part of the tired soldiers hours and days and weeks of extra and unnecessary work, lavished, not for their creature comfort, not for their physical safety, but solely for their artistic satisfaction.
It was twilight when we took our leave and night had fallen long before we rolled into Château Thiery, whither Captain d'A——'s orderly had transported our bags, and where a very late dinner and comfortable beds were awaiting us.
With the 5th French Army,Aug. 9.
I have just returned from attending a soldiers' school of bomb-throwing. The military authorities permitted my presence as an exceptional favor, informing me that this is the first time such a privilege has been accorded a foreign civilian.
This particular school holds its classes in a large green field in a peaceful little valley, within long artillery range of the firing lines. No German shells, however, have hitherto distracted the pupils from their rather gruesome lessons, and I will not endanger their continued studies by giving a more definite description of the locality.
This school is attended by privates from each regiment, who spend four days at their highly explosive studies. Toward the middleof the field, about two hundred yards from one end and about three hundred from the other, was a section of open trench about twenty yards long and some four feet deep. This trench was about the usual three feet in width except in its centre, where for about five feet it was recessed back to a width of some six feet. This was where the French instructor stood and whirled his arms to throw the bombs. A couple of feet to the left of this recess was another recess, covered with a bomb-proof roof of logs and earth.
Into this the instructor and his pupil sought refuge from the effects of the bomb explosion. As the explosion really is surprisingly violent and takes place at the longest only five seconds from the time the mechanism of the bomb is started, and at a maximum distance of thirty yards, the instructor and any one in the trench with him have got to be exceedingly spry in running under the bomb-proof in order to beat the bomb. There is, too, the danger of a premature explosion.
To make me feel more entirely at my ease, they told me that only a few days ago an officer of explosives brought a Colonel to see one ofthese demonstrations in another school, behind a different part of the line. As they came to the entrance of the trench the officer politely made way for the Colonel to enter the trench first. As the Colonel did so, the bomb exploded prematurely and killed the Colonel outright.
About twenty yards in front of the trench was dug a shallow dummy trench to represent a German target. Some 150 yards further distant was set up a section of wire entanglements.
We found the 128 soldiers ranged in line a few yards behind the trench. At its edge I took my place with the Captain of explosives and three or four other officers. The infantrymen lined up two deep behind us.
In the open recess in the trench stood the non-commissioned officer of engineers, facing backward toward us. He was the instructor. At the order of the Captain he placed an innocent-looking satchel on the trench edge at his right elbow, plunged a hand into it and briskly plucked out, one after the other, eight different varieties of bombs. Picking them up, one at a time, he gave a terse lecture on the construction and method of operation of each.
The bombs were all fully loaded, and the explosion of any one of them would have sent a great many of us well on the way to the cemetery. I noticed in some of the officers, and undoubtedly in myself, a certain tenseness as the engineer nonchalantly illustrated within an inch or two of actuality how a percussion bomb would explode if brought in contact with the ground.
In demonstrating the first grenade he adjusted around his wrist a loop with about eight inches of cord hanging from it. A heavy two-inch metal pin was attached to the end of the cord. Picking up a black spherical bomb slightly bigger than a baseball, he stuck the pin lightly into a hole in its side. The bomb was to be thrown with full force. In flying out of the hand it pulled itself free from the pin, causing a friction which ignited the five-second fuse. The pin of course remained behind, hanging to the cord, and was promptly stuck into another bomb. This bomb, being particularly heavy, could be thrown only fifteen metres by an average thrower and twenty as a maximum.
The second bomb was black and pear-shaped.It had a spring which looked like a nickel shoe-horn folded back tight against it. The pressure of the palm against the shoe-horn in throwing it released the spring and started the fuse, which, like all the rest, was set at five seconds.
The third bomb was a can of white tin attached by two wires to a white deal handle. A nail was stuck into a hole in the can. The nail was hammered in by a sharp rap against the ground. ("If you try to knock it in against the palm of your hand it would hurt," explained our instructor.) The nail, driven in, started the fuse.
In the demonstration of this particular bomb our mentor was quite peculiarly realistic, bringing it violently down to within what seemed like the fraction of an inch of the ground.
The fourth bomb was black and round and was started by scratching the tip of a stiffly projecting bit of ignitible fuse against a black band of raspy material worn round the thumb of the left hand. The fifth bomb was lighted in a very similar manner against the side of an ordinary safety-match box. These five were regular grenades.
The sixth and seventh were incendiary grenadesto set fire to wooden obstructions, etc. The one, in exploding, scattered the burning liquid to a distance of a few yards, the other set fire only to the spot where it burst. These were both large spherical bombs. Before being thrown kerosene was poured into them through a little bunghole, which was then stopped up.
The eighth was an asphyxiating bomb. I cannot, however, be too careful in emphasizing the fact that this so-called "asphyxiating" bomb was not poisonous, like the German asphyxiating gases, but merely irritated the eyes, nostrils and throat, so that when thrown into a German bomb-proof it would force out the occupants. It left no ill after-effects.
Besides these there were two aerial torpedoes. One was shot out of an old-fashioned little mortar propelled by black powder. The other was bigger and more powerful, had a fin tail to keep its flight accurate and was fired out of a complicated little gun. As both this torpedo and its gun are new inventions, I am not permitted to give any closer details concerning them.
The Sergeant of engineers having completed his little lecture, with himself and his class stillin this world, the soldiers and officers all withdrew to the end of the field, some 200 yards behind the trench, and there lay down on their stomachs. I got into the trench with the engineer, placing myself to his left in front of the entrance to the bomb-proof, and the demonstration in the gentle art of grenade-throwing began. He took bomb number one, stuck the pin at the end of the cord firmly into the hole, swung his arm back and let fly.
Having seen the departure of the bomb, I ungracefully tumbled into the bomb-proof, with the engineer a close second. Once there, there was an appreciable pause. Then came an explosion, the violence of which really astonished me. I could distinctly feel the ground shake.
After giving the fragments which had been hurled our way plenty of time to come down on the roof, we stepped out into the trench again. The engineer next picked up bomb number three with the deal handle, hammered the nail home with one sharp rap against the edge of the trench and sent the grenade hurtling through the air.
The mechanism of the first bomb had not been put in operation until the bomb startedon its flight. But the fuse of this third bomb started burning the instant he hammered the nail in, and was burning while he was whirling his arm preparatory to letting it fly. As it thus got a running start on us, we had only barely time to get under cover before the explosion took place.
Next came bomb number four. The demonstrator adjusted the black band round his left thumb, took the bomb in his right hand and gave it a scratch.
He evidently had some doubts as to whether the first scratch had lighted the fuse, because after glancing at it he proceeded to give it a second scratch before throwing it.
I need hardly say that I had already made home base in the bomb-proof and was perfectly satisfied to watch from there his second effort to get a light, which was crowned with complete success.
After watching the way these three bombs were started and thrown I now wanted to watch the rest of them explode. So after considerable discussion between the staff-officer who had me in charge and the officer of explosives as to just how much danger there was in theoperation, we moved out of the trench up to the top of a little rise about fifty yards to the right, where we ensconced ourselves in some bushes. The soldiers were all kept at their original distances of 200 yards behind the trench.
From my new position I got an excellent view of the engineer whirling his arm and letting fly; of the heavy black objects rushing through the air; of the accuracy with which they hit the dummy trench; of the lazy manner in which they rolled only two or three feet along the ground before coming to rest, and of the treacherous inertia with which each lay apparently as dead and cold as a piece of coal dropped by some passing coal-cart, while the second of time which possibly elapsed seemed like a minute at the least. Then came an amazingly instantaneous burst of lead-colored smoke covering a circle some forty yards in diameter, accompanied by an explosion of surprising violence. I could see no flash of fire at all.
Next came the new aerial torpedo fired from the new gun. (The old little mortar with the black powder was not used.) The new gun made practically no report in discharging the torpedo. It was beautiful to watch the slenderfishlike projectile go sailing in a high and graceful arc up, up, up, against the sky and then down, down, down, until it landed just beyond the wire entanglements. But it really never did land, for it had a percussion device in its nose which exploded it on touching ground. This big torpedo had a reduced charge of explosive so as not to destroy too much of the field. Judging by the report of this reduced charge, the full charge going off must be the grandfather of all explosions.
Next came the two incendiary bombs. One of these burst on contact, setting fire to the patch of grass where it landed. The other had a fuse which shot out a stream of golden sparks like fireworks before exploding. This bomb threw burning liquid in all directions, setting many fires in the grass for a radius of several yards.
Last came the asphyxiating bomb. It consisted of a sphere formed by five pieces of perforated iron held loosely together in a sort of disjointed shell by a little wire basket. Inside this openwork ball hung a small glass vessel full of acid. When the engineer threw the ball against the ground the five pieces of metal shell collapsed onto the glass, breaking it andliberating the acid, which made a wet splash on the ground. This acid in turn makes a gas which the French somewhat euphemistically call "gas timide."
To show that this gas was not poisonous, like the German gases, we were invited to stand in a close circle right around the fragments of the bomb immediately after it had been thrown, with our heads bent over. We stood and stood, sniffing away, but could detect no gas of any kind.
"Ah," said the officer of explosives, "in the full open air like this our 'gas timide' takes longer to be noticed, but in an inclosed space it works very rapidly."
Hardly had he finished speaking when I began to notice a smell something like wood alcohol. At the same time my eyes began to stream with tears, my nose felt as though it was indulging in one long continuous sneeze, and I turned hastily away, coughing and sputtering and wiping my eyes, with an officer on each side keeping me active company.
"If that's a 'timide' gas," I remarked to one of the officers as we left the pupils to begin actual practice, "I'd hate to meet a fierce one."
Headquarters of the Belgian Army,La Panne, Belgium,Aug. 30.
Yesterday I spent a day with the Belgian artillery. In the morning at ten o'clock Commandant L——, who had me in charge, called for me at the very comfortable seaside hotel where I am staying. In his military motor we threaded our way through the streets of the town. These were jammed with thousands of Belgian soldiers enjoying their six days of rest before returning for three days in the front trenches (followed by six days in reserve and three days again in the front trenches). A cheerful, well-fed-looking lot of men they are, not smart, but husky-looking in their new khaki uniforms and greatcoats.
"Alas!" an infantry Captain yesterday complained to me, "they are fine soldiers and have good uniforms, but we cannot get the men tolook 'chic' in them like the British. Just look at those caps! They've pulled them and twisted them about to suit their ideas! Those caps a few days ago were 'chic' caps! And now, mon Dieu! look at them!"
However, I confess I was not much interested in whether these privates were Belgian Beau Brummels or not. I had come to Flanders not to inspect them on parade, but to watch them work on the firing line. There I found them scrupulouslyclean, very patient and wholly courageous, attributes which are more important than creased trousers, unwrinkled jackets and well-blocked caps.
Once free from La Panne, our motor made good time along the country road till we reached Furnes. There we stopped to take some photographs of the beautiful old Hôtel de Ville which the German shells that drop in from time to time have left practically undamaged.
From Furnes on we took the straight road to Ypres. The road was for a time quite congested with ammunition-wagons, ambulances, supply-lorries, etc. On our left we passed an encampment of mitrailleuse dog-teams; on our right a park of British armored motor-cannon.
We passed, too, long lines of trolley-cars packed with cheerful soldiers being brought back from the front for their period of rest, and with others going out to take their places. Thus the humble street-car has taken its place in the machinery of war.
Soon we turned into another road which led us to the village of Lampernisse. Here we visited and photographed the ruins of the church. Not very long ago the Germans dropped a big shell into this church and killed forty-two chasseurs who were sleeping in it. They are buried in the graveyard in one big grave. Subsequently the Germans, believing that the steeple of the church was being used for observation purposes, kept on shelling it till they brought it all down, and incidentally wrecked what remained of the village.
From here on our movements must be shrouded in mystery, but ultimately at about 11.45 we reached a humble group of farm buildings, the headquarters of Colonel D——, commanding the artillery of the sector. We found him in a little bomb-proof telephone central built onto one of the farm buildings. With a Major and a Captain he was poring oververy large scale maps spread on a table. Behind him a soldier sat at a telephone switchboard. From the outside a whole sheaf of telephone wires ran away, in various directions.
My Commandant presented me to the Colonel and explained my desire to see some howitzers in action.
"Perfect!" exclaimed the Colonel genially. "We have just definitely located a German blockhouse in their defense system and at two o'clock this afternoon we are going to destroy it with one of our 150-millimetre howitzers. So if you will honor the Villa Beausejour with your company at lunch you can afterward watch the howitzer work."
The old farm-house had been euphemistically christened the Villa Beausejour by the Colonel's staff.
Inviting me into the bomb-proof, the Colonel then showed me on one of the large scale maps the whole lay of the land. Red lines indicated the Belgian intrenchments, blue lines the German. In the same way all over the map behind the red line the Belgian batteries were indicated in red, while the same held good in blue of those German batteries which the Belgians had managedto locate. Some of these latter were false emplacements. It was only when a little blue cannon was drawn behind the emplacement that an actual gun was indicated.
The Colonel pointed out to me on this map the exact location of the Villa Beausejour, of the blockhouse which was to be destroyed, and of the gun which was to destroy it. He also showed me photographs of the German positions taken from Belgian aeroplanes. Taking one of these photographs and comparing it with a map, he explained to me how the map showed only one road leading to a certain spot, while the photograph showed a new second road leading to the same spot. This indicated the existence of a concealed battery at that place.
The telephone bell rang. "This is Number 12," answered the soldier-operator. He listened for a few moments and then told the Colonel that Headquarters wished him to send over an officer after lunch to cross-question the two German prisoners just captured for information which might be of use to his artillery.
"Tell them I shall do so," replied the Colonel.
As we had another half-hour before lunch, he deputed one of his officers to take me to abattery of 75's not far off and incidentally show me some of the shell-holes made in the neighborhood by the German "marmites," as the French and Belgians call the big high-explosive shells.
A brisk walk brought us to the 75's, cleverly concealed in an artificial wood which had been transplanted bodily. The Captain in Command showed me the guns, and also a fine bomb-proof shelter which he had just completed. It was very much needed, as, in spite of the artificial woods, the Germans had roughly located his battery, and whenever any Belgian 75's in his neighborhood open up on the enemy they immediately cut loose on his battery. The whole surface of the fields for hundreds of yards around was pockmarked with shell-holes.
He showed me one of his guns where a curious thing had happened. A couple of days before a German shell had hit obliquely the steel shield of this gun and had glanced off through the left wheel, knocking the spokes out on its way. The shell had then entered the ammunition-caisson standing next to the gun, had there burst, hurling the heavy caisson bodily through the air to where its wreck landed upside down, and had not exploded its contents of shells.
The Colonel commanding the artillery of the sectorPage 101"COLONEL D——, COMMANDING THE ARTILLERY OF THE SECTOR"
Page 101"COLONEL D——, COMMANDING THE ARTILLERY OF THE SECTOR"
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"COLONEL D——, COMMANDING THE ARTILLERY OF THE SECTOR"
The author in one of the biggest shell-pitsPage 105THE AUTHOR IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHELL-PITS, WHICH WERETEN FEET DEEP AND TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER
Page 105THE AUTHOR IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHELL-PITS, WHICH WERETEN FEET DEEP AND TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER
Page 105
THE AUTHOR IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHELL-PITS, WHICH WERE
TEN FEET DEEP AND TWENTY FEET IN DIAMETER
After taking photographs of some of the biggest shell-pits, which were some ten feet deep and twenty feet in diameter, we returned to the Villa Beausejour and lunch. We sat down fourteen to lunch—the Colonel, ten artillery officers, the Chaplain, my Commandant and I.
Lunch consisted of potato soup, paté de foie gras, vegetables, strawberry-jam pie, cheese and coffee. There was no wine to start with, but one of the officers soon came in with two bottles of white wine, which we all mixed with our mineral-water.
The talk ran mostly on the two German prisoners.
"I certainly hope we shall be able to find out from them just where that battery is that has been giving us all this trouble lately," exclaimed one officer.
"And those howitzers that I can't locate," from another.
"And where that body of troops to the right sleeps," from a third.
"Perhaps they'll know in which of those farms the German headquarters are," from a fourth.
It appeared that the prisoners were from German Poland. When the Belgian artillery had the day before driven the German troops into their bomb-proofs these two had seized the opportunity to crawl forward out of the trench, through the wire entanglements, across the open to a Belgian advanced listening-post, where they had surrendered. They were now at General Headquarters and had already given much valuable information, including the unusually large number of men who slept during the daytime in the blockhouse, and the presence in a certain farm of a number of German officers.
A Captain of a battery of 75's who sat near me at lunch, was going to tackle the farm-house that afternoon with his guns. The Captain in command of my howitzers was not at lunch, as he was already on his way to his observation-post, situated at the extreme front, within 270 yards of the blockhouse. From there he was going to correct the howitzer fire, over some four kilometres of telephone line connecting his observation-post with his guns.
A good deal of the talk at lunch was devoted to anathematizing a certain general-staff officer who had charge of the uniforming of the armyand, apparently, was bent on changing the new khaki caps of the officers from the British shape, which they all liked, to the French shape.
A good story was told to illustrate the amazing efficiency of the German intelligence department. One day when the army was being reuniformed in khaki, a certain regiment of chasseurs was ordered to leave their trenches right after dark that night to march to the rear for the purpose of having their new uniforms issued to them. An hour or two after they had received this order the Germans right opposite them hoisted a great placard above their trenches. On it was sign-painted:
"Good-bye, brave chasseurs! Run along to get your new uniforms at seventeen francs fifty apiece!"
Lunch being finished, my Commandant and I said good-bye all round and, with detailed directions, started on a half-hour's walk to find the howitzer battery. The Chaplain, in khaki, with an old black umbrella and a long fishing-pole, came along as far as the first canal. There, standing on a flat bit of embankment between two shell-holes, he placidly began to fish.
The artillery, which had been booming in adesultory way all morning, had of course stopped during the lunch-hour. For the artillerymen on both sides certainly keep union rules in laying off when the time for the dinner-pail comes round. If the noon whistle blew they could not be more punctual in dropping work.
Now, however, the noon-hour was over and the guns again began to take up their monotonous bass drumming. For a full half-hour we walked, first along a deserted wagon-road, then to the left, along a path by the bank of a canal, past an artificial hedge here and an artificial grove of trees there. Some of these had batteries ambushed in them, others were shams to divert the attention of the German aviators and the fire of the German artillery from the real emplacements.
Finally, we came to a tall false hedge made of withered saplings wired together. In the lee of this hedge was a low flat roof, perhaps three feet above the surface of the ground, covered with a sprinkling of earth and boughs. Under this we climbed down into a cellar-like excavation about three feet deep, giving six feet of head room.
Here I first made the acquaintance of Julia. I found her standing with her back to me under the plank shelter, with only her exceedingly short and retroussé nose sniffling up at the leaden patch of threatening sky which showed between the forward edge of the roof and the top of the high false hedge in front. No one could well call Julia beautiful, but there was power in every line and curve of her. She was a particularly short-muzzled 150-millimetre heavy field-howitzer, and she had been christened Julia in chalk letters across the back of her thick steel shield by the members of her devoted crew.
On her breech were engraved a crown and a big "C. I.," for she and her three sisters had been intended for Carol I., King of Roumania, before they were bought up by the Belgian Government. One of the four had exploded through trying to fire a 155-millimetre shell through her 150-millimetre bore, but the other three were doing fine work for their adopted country. On my way to my appointment with Julia, we had passed one of her sisters, called "Zoe," cowering up against the wall of a very disreputable old farm-house, hiding her humiliation ina hole in the ground under a plank roofing and a false hedge much like Julia's.
Any one who thinks that nowadays he will see artillery ranged in imposing array, is doomed to disappointment. The artillery commander (especially of the heavier guns) goes around the countryside stealthily hiding one piece here, surreptitiously slipping another in there, always selecting the most separate and inconspicuous locations, much as a woman will wander around a hotel room stowing her pieces of jewelry here and there where the burglars will never think of looking for them. Only the burglars in the present case are hostile shells that make holes ten feet deep and twenty feet across.
Julia's crew consisted of a Lieutenant and eight men. The Lieutenant and seven of the men were grouped around the breech of the gun when I arrived. The eighth man squatted to the left by a field-telephone with the receiver held to his ear. Commandant L—— introduced me to the Lieutenant, and then asked whether his Captain had reached the observation-post. The Lieutenant had not heard from him yet, but imagined he must get there any moment.
It began to rain hard, much to the vexation of the Commandant, who feared it would hide the blockhouse from the observer and put an end to the bombardment.
"Oh! no," said the Lieutenant; "he's only 270 yards distant from it. He'll be able to see it all right."
On the board floor to the left, between the telephone and the front wall of the excavation, were piled twenty-five or thirty wicked-looking 150-millimetre high-explosive shells. They were conical in shape, about 2½ feet long and 6 inches in diameter, made of steel, with a copper band around them near the base, and a copper nose.
I started to lift one of them, and only succeeded at the second attempt. They weighed about 110 pounds apiece.
Stacked next to them were a corresponding number of hollow copper cylinders containing stiff little cream-colored children's belts, with eyelet-holes down the middle, coiled neatly inside them. Some of them had one coil; others two coils, one on top of the other; others three coils superimposed. These were the propelling charges for the shells, and were of three strengthsaccording as one, two or three of the coils of cream-colored explosive were put in the copper shells. They were topped off with a heavy felt pad which fitted neatly into the cylinder.
Meantime the rain came down in torrents and began to leak through the thin plank roofing in little streams which were very hard to dodge.
The Lieutenant showed us a bomb-proof which he had just begun to build into the earth wall of the cellar, behind the stack of shells. He was going to cover it with a concrete roof, pile a few feet of earth on top of that, then some sand-bags, and top the whole off with boulders, so as to make any shell hitting it explode at once on the surface, instead of boring half-way down before exploding. He was doing all this work with his eight men at night when they were not handling the gun. During the day they slept except when, as now, they wanted to disturb the sleep of the enemy. This bomb-proof was only meant for refuge when the Germans began bombarding him. The men's regular sleeping-quarters were a little to the rear.
And still the rain came down, the airbecame raw and cold, and the little waterfalls became harder and harder to dodge. But the man at the telephone squatted patiently by the wall, and his seven mates chatted placidly together in incomprehensible Flemish, switching instantly to French when answering any question the Lieutenant put to them.
The Lieutenant explained how the gun was aimed, the sighting device showing a stake in line with a church steeple; only as there was nothing to be seen in front of Julia except an earth bank and ten feet of false hedge, it stands to reason that stake and steeple were behind her and appeared, not through a telescope as I had just stupidly thought, but as a reflection in a mirror—which is the way all well-conducted howitzers are aimed.
Finally, after an hour's wait the Lieutenant rang up his Major on the telephone and asked whether anything was amiss with the Captain. No; the Captain was only linking up a new telephone connection nearly four kilometres in front of us.
The Lieutenant pointed out a false hedge some hundred yards behind us.
"That is exceedingly dangerous for us here,"he explained. "It is much too close to us. It should be at least 150 yards further removed. If it draws the German fire, as it is intended to do, that fire is just as apt to hit us as the false hedge. It was put up as a protection to another gun which was off there to the right, but it's a very uncomfortable thing to have near us, especially before we have a bomb-proof to crawl into."
"Ting—aling—aling!" went the telephone bell. The soldier listened. "The Captain says, 'Are you all ready?'"
"Tell him 'yes'," replied the Lieutenant.
"Aim for 3,750 metres," repeated the soldier at the telephone.
The Lieutenant and a couple of his men busied themselves around the sight and elevating cranks of the gun. Another man removed a leather cap which had been fitted over Julia's nose to keep the rain out.
I was busy sticking cotton wool in my ears.
"The Captain says to say when you are ready and he will give the order to fire."
"All ready," said the Lieutenant, backing away from Julia and holding a thick white cord in his hand which ran from her to him.
"All ready," replied the soldier into the telephone.
"Tirez!" ("Fire!") said he a fraction of a second later.
The Lieutenant's arm gave a jerk, the whole front of the shelter was a mass of blood-red flame, there was a bellow of sound, the barrel of the great gun ran smoothly three feet or so back into the cellar and then smoothly forward again. There was a rush of air around my legs.
Almost simultaneously with the report I heard with one ear the telephonist say, "Coup parti" ("The shot has left"), while with the other I listened to the long-drawn wheeze with which the projectile mounted into the sky on its mountain-high trajectory. In the second which had meanwhile elapsed one of the artillerymen had swung open the breech of the gun, another had taken out the now empty copper cylinder and placed it on the floor to the right of Julia, a third had lifted a new shell and with the aid of the second had run it into the breech, and a fourth had slipped in a fresh copper cylinder containing a full charge of three of the little cream-colored tape-coils.Whereupon the first artilleryman had swung to and locked the breech again.
"In eighteen seconds you should hear the shell explode," said the Lieutenant, taking his stand by the telephonist with an open notebook and pencil in his hands—"15, 16, 17, 18"—I finished counting. Boom! came the distant explosion.
A few seconds of silence.
"Plus 3," announced the telephonist, repeating an order from the distant Captain.
The Lieutenant made an entry in his notebook and simultaneously rattled off some figures like a football quarterback. The men worked over the sights and cranks, while my Commandant said to me: "That shot was too far to the right; plus 3 means five three-thousandths further to the left."
"All ready," said the Lieutenant.
"All ready," repeated the telephonist, and then:
"Tirez!" and again the twitch of the white cord, the blood-red flame, the roar, the slow, easy recoil, the diminishing wheeze, the "Coup parti," the eighteen seconds' silence, and the distant boom.
"Plus 4," sang out the telephonist, and there was a mechanical repetition of operations. "The observer corrected the first shot about ten metres to the left, and, finding that was not enough, corrected the second shot another fifteen metres to the left. They'll edge along like that till they reach the blockhouse, destroying the trench to right of it on the way. Then, when they've destroyed the blockhouse completely, if that does not take up all the day's allowance of shells, they'll expend the remainder on knocking out the trench to the left of the blockhouse. To-day's allowance for Julia is twenty shells, and probably she will use up most of them on the blockhouse to make a thorough job of it."
"Tirez!" came the telephonist's voice, and as the roar was succeeded by silence, my Commandant exclaimed to me: "Filons!" French slang for which the American equivalent is, "Let us beat it!"
As I reluctantly crawled up into the rain after having shaken hands with the Lieutenant, my Commandant explained that the Germans would undoubtedly begin to search the immediate vicinity with their artillery to tryto silence the gun which was throwing the "marmites" into them. As we had the provocative false hedge right behind us and no bomb-proof to crawl into, I had to agree that he was prudent.
And so we "beat it" through the downpour, sliding around in the oily Flemish mud, while the German guns began to drop whole kitchen-loads of "marmites" into a poor wrecked village five hundred yards to our left, from which they evidently suspected that our shots had come.
As we slithered along, drenched to the skin, toward the "Villa Beausejour" and our waiting motor, we could hear the Captain of 75's letting off salvo after salvo at the farm-house of which the prisoners had informed him, while behind us Julia continued to explode at half-minute intervals. There was all the difference in the world between the dry short report of the big howitzer and the hollower, sharper, more penetrating explosion of the 75's.
To-day I learned from the Captain of the 75's that his first few volleys had set the farm-house on fire. A lot of soldiers had comerunning to put the fire out. His guns kept on dropping and scattering these until, with a series of loud explosions, the whole farm-house had blown up. It turned out that it was not an officers' headquarters, but an ammunition store-house.
As to our blockhouse, I understand that it was completely demolished, though whether or not it took the whole of Julia's twenty shells to complete the work I was unable to learn.
Headquarters of the Belgian Army,La Panne,Aug. 30.
To-day I was given the opportunity of comparing the trenches of Belgium with those I had visited in France. It was a very interesting contrast.
Commandant L——, who still had me in charge, picked me up at my hotel at 10 o'clock in the morning. Proceedings were delayed while I insisted on taking a snap-shot of him in the nickel-steel skull-cap which he wore inside his khaki cap.