After idling along the boulevard for a few moments, I decided to go to my usual hunting ground for news—the Embassy. I hailed a taxi, and just as I opened the door on one side to enter, a bearded Frenchman opened the door opposite. I stated that the taxi was mine, and he declared emphatically that it belonged to him. The chauffeur evidently saw us both at the same instant and could not make up his mind as to our respective rights. A crowd began to gather, as the Frenchman, recognizing that I was a foreigner, began haranguing the chauffeur.
"What do you mean?" he cried. "Do you propose to let foreigners have taxis in times like this? Taxis are scarce."
The crowd began to mutter "foreigner." In a minute they would have declared that I was a German. But I had an inspiration.
"I want to go to the American Embassy," I told the Frenchman. "If you are going that direction why not come with me? We can share the cab."
I have always maintained that a Frenchman, no matter how excited he is—and when he is excited he is often almost impossible—will alwayslisten to reason if you can get his attention. My proposition was so entirely unusual that immediately he listened, then smiled and stepped into the cab, motioning me to do the same.
"L'Ambassade Americaine," he bellowed to the chauffeur, and as we drove away he was accepting a cigar from my case.
He explained both his excitement and his hurry. When the mobilization call came it would be necessary for him to join his regiment on the first day. I wanted to tell the chauffeur to drive to his home first, but he would not allow this, and when we arrived at the Embassy it was actually with difficulty that I forced upon him the payment for the taxi up to that point.
I was soon in the famous private room of conference and confidence. The Ambassador, as usual, was sitting with his face to the open window, and smoking a cigarette.
I placed my hat and stick upon the desk and seated myself in silence. We remained quiet for quite a full minute. Finally Mr. Herrick said, with a short laugh:
"Well, there does not seem anything more to talk about, does there?"
"No," I replied, "we seem to be at that point. There isn't anything even to write about."
A door behind us opened quietly, and Mr. Robert Woods Bliss, the first secretary of the Embassy, entered. He walked to the desk. Neither the Ambassador nor I turned. Mr. Bliss stood silent for a moment, then said quietly:
"It's come."
"Ah," breathed Mr. Herrick.
"Yes," replied Mr. Bliss, "the Foreign Office has just telephoned. The news will be on the streets in a minute."
It was the biggest moment, perhaps, the world will ever know. It was so big that it stunned us all.
I rose and took my hat and stick.
"Well," I ejaculated somewhat uncertainly.
"Well," said the Ambassador in much the same manner.
Then we shook hands; and like a person in a trance I walked out of the room and down to the street.
The isolated Rue de Chaillot was quite deserted; I walked down to the Place de l'Alma to find a cab. There the scene was different. Cabs by the dozen whirled along, but none heeded my signals. A human wave was rolling over the city. Fiacres, street cars, taxis filled with men and baggage were sweeping along. Almost everyvehicle was headed for one or another of the railway stations. Already the extra editions had notified the populace of the state of affairs and mobilization was under way.
Finally an empty fiacre came along and I signaled the driver, jumping aboard at the same moment. Just as an hour earlier when I signaled a cab, a Frenchman stepped in at the opposite side. Only, this time, the Frenchman wasted no words concerning his rights to the carriage.
He bowed. "I go to the Place de l'Opera," he said pleasantly.
I bowed. "I go to exactly the same spot," I replied tactfully.
We sat down and he directed the driver. We remained silent as we drove down the Cours la Reine until we came opposite the Esplanade of the Invalides. The sun was setting behind the golden dome over the tomb of Napoleon. Then my companion spoke:
"I will take the subway at the Opera station and go to my home. It will be the last time. I join my regiment to-morrow."
I looked at him for a moment, then asked curiously: "How do you feel about it? Tell me—are you glad—and are you confident?"
He looked me straight in the eye. "I am glad," he answered. "We are all glad—glad that the waiting and the disappointments, the humiliations of forty-four years, are over."
"And will you win—you think?"
"I do not know, but we will fight well—that is all I can say, and this time we are not fighting alone."
We arrived at the Opera. He jumped to the sidewalk and put out his hand. "Good-by," he said, smiling. "May we meet again." I wrung his hand and watched him dive down the stairs to the subway station.
I remained at the office as the afternoon slipped into evening and evening into night, writing my despatches on the actual outbreak of war. As I sat by the window, I suddenly realized that instead of the dazzling illumination of the boulevards I was gazing into the darkness. I investigated this phenomenon and I wrote another despatch upon the new aspect of the city of Paris on the first night of the war. It was a cable describing the death of the old "Ville Lumière" and the birth of the new French spirit. For not only were the boulevards dark, but the voices of the city were hushed. It began to rain—a gentle, warm, summer rain; the gendarmes put on theirrubber capes and hoods and melted into the shadows.
I went out to take my despatches to the cable office. The streets were quiet as death. A forlorn fiacre ambled dismally out of a gloomy side street, the bell on the horse's neck giving forth a hollow-sounding tinkle. I climbed in. The driver turned immediately off the boulevard into a back street, when suddenly the decrepit horse fell to his haunches in the slippery road. At once I felt, for I could scarcely see, four silent figures surrounding us. The night before I would have scented danger; but now I had a different feeling entirely. The four shadowy figures remained silent, at attention, as the driver hauled the kicking and plunging horse to his feet.
"He thinks of the war," said the driver.
A quiet chuckle came from the quartet, and I could now distinguish that they were gendarmes.
"You travel late," one of them said, addressing me.
"La presse," I replied briefly.
"Bien!" was the reply. We drove down the dark street, I astonished at this city that had found itself; this nation that had got quietly and determinately to business, at the very signal of conflict, to the amazement of the entire world.
PART TWO
THE GREATEST STORY
WYTHE WILLIAMS OF THE "NEW YORK TIMES"
CHAPTER VI
THE ACTUALITY
Onthe sidewalkterrasseof a little café a few doors from the American Embassy I was one of a quartet of newspaper men on one of the final afternoons of August, 1914.
War news, thanks to the censor, had lapsed in volume and intensity; but the troubles of refugee Americans still made our cables bulky, and we continued to pass much time at the Embassy or in its vicinity.
A man wabbled wearily down the street on a bicycle. I recognized him as a "special correspondent" who had called on me ten days before, asking advice as to where he should apply for credentials permitting him to describe battles. He later disappeared into the then vague territory known as the "zone of military activity," without any papers authorizing the trip.
He leaned his bicycle against a tree and joined us. He had little to say as to where he had been, but told us that he had been a prisoner of the British army for several days. He mentioned atown near the Belgian frontier where, as he described the situation, "the entire army came piling in before he had a chance to pile out."
I do not know what made me suspect that Mr. Special Correspondent was then the possessor of big news, for he gave not the slightest suggestion of the direction in which the British army was traveling. But I suspected him. In a few minutes he left us to call on the Ambassador. Later, when I saw him ride away from the Embassy on his bicycle, I sent in my card.
Mr. Herrick was as bland as usual, but there was a worried look on his face. I wasted no time.
"Mr. —— called on you this afternoon," I said, naming the special correspondent. "He told you some real news."
"Yes, that is so," the Ambassador replied. "How did you guess it?"
I explained that I only had a suspicion, and the Ambassador continued:
"He cannot cable it, you need not worry. He will not attempt it. He has gone now to write an account for the mail. He told me so that I could make some plans."
"Some plans?" I interrupted. "The news is bad then."
Mr. Herrick eyed me keenly for a moment—then he leaned over his desk and spoke in a whisper. He kept the confidences of the "special correspondent," but he gave me information that supplemented it, which he had from his own sources. He told me no names—no details—but he gave me the news appearing in the official communiqués three full days later;—that the British had been forced back at Mons—the French defeated at Charleroi, and that the entire Allied line was retreating. I did not learn where the line was. But as I left the Embassy I realized that France was invaded; I realized that the greatest story in the world was at hand. The fear was upon me, although I failed to grasp it entirely, that this was a story which in its entirety would never be written for a newspaper.
Mr. Special Correspondent passed two days in the seclusion of his hotel writing a splendid chapter for which he received high praise, but he was unable to get it printed until several weeks after the entire story had gone into history. Other correspondents were able to write half and quarter chapters which in a few instances received publication while the story was in progress.
I sat at my desk that night pondering on how to cable some inkling of my information toAmerica. I confess that I almost wished the cable was cut and the loose ends lost on the bottom of the Atlantic.
I studied the map of Europe facing me on the wall. Sending a courier to England was as useless as cabling direct, for the English censor was equally severe as the French. A code message was under censorial ban. A courier aboard the Sud-express might have filed the news from Spain or Portugal but the mobilization plans of General Joffre had arranged that there would be no Sud-express for some time.
There were undoubtedly other correspondents who knew as much concerning the state of affairs as I. Many British correspondents, without credentials, were dodging about the armies, getting into captivity and out again. Several American correspondents were in Belgium following the Germans as best they could. But none of them was at the end of a cable. Had they been they would have been quite as helpless as I. For had I been able that night to use the cable as I desired, I would have beaten the press of the world by three full days with the story of the danger that threatened Paris.
The next night, although I was completely ignorant whether the news was then known inAmerica, I tried to beat the censor at his own game. I succeeded to the extent of having my despatch passed, but unfortunately it was not understood in the home office of my newspaper. This was my scheme:
During the day rumors of disaster began to spread; but the Paris papers printed nothing of the truth, and officially the Allied armies continued to hold the Belgian frontier. That night refugees from French cities began entering Paris at the Gare du Nord.
I began an innocent despatch that seemed hardly worth the cable tolls. It ambled along, with cumbrous sentences and involved grammar, describing American war charities. Then without what in cable parlance is known as a "full stop," which indicates a complete break in the sense of the reading matter, I inserted the words "refugees crowding gare du nord to-night from points south of Lille," and continued the despatch with more material of the sort with which it began.
I went home hoping for the best and wondering if I had made myself sufficiently clear to arouse the suspicion of the copy reader on the other side of the ocean who handled my copy. If I had I knew that those eleven words would be printed in the largest display type the following morning.
Two weeks later, when the next batch of newspapers reached Paris, I read those words with interest. They were all there, but carefully buried in the story of war charities exactly where I had placed them.
CHAPTER VII
THE FIELD OF GLORY
Thebattle of the Marne was fought by the Allies in the direct interest of the city of Paris. The result was the city's salvation. At the time, only a small percentage of the inhabitants knew anything about it. But as all the world knows now, the battlefield of the Marne was the first field of glory for the Allied armies in the great European war. When the war is over, the sight-seeing motors will reach it in two hours, probably starting from the corner of the Avenue de l'Opera and the Rue de la Paix—a street that by now might have a different name had it not been for the thousands who died only a few miles away.
On one of the first days of September, 1914, the few journalists who remained in Paris gathered at the Café Napolitain early in the afternoon, instead of at theapéritifhour. The Café Napolitain, around the corner from the sight-seeing motor stand, is the rendezvous for journalists, and always has been. At theapéritifhour—just before dinner—you may see all the best-known figures in the French journalistic world, also the correspondents of the London and New York press, seated on its sidewalkterrasse.
I sat on theterrasseon that never to be forgotten afternoon of September. We were mostly Englishmen and Americans. The majority of our French confrères were serving in their regiments. Some of them, with whom we had argued only five weeks before concerning the trial of Madame Caillaux, were now lying on the fields of Charleroi and Mons. Some of the Englishmen had decided, because of the rumored orders of the Kaiser concerning the fate of captured British journalists, that Bordeaux was a better center for news than Paris, and had followed the Government to their new capital, on the anniversary of Sedan. Several of the Americans had also left town, but in order to better follow the movements of the Allied armies. Owing to the vigorous unemotionalism of General Joffre, none of them was any nearer the "field of operations" than we who sat on the Caféterrasse.
I doubt if ever a world capital presented such a scene, or ever will again, as Paris on that afternoon. The day itself was perfect—glorious summer, not hot—just pleasantly warm. The sunhung over the city casting straight shadows of the full leaves, down on the tree lined sidewalk. But there was not an automobile, nor carriage, scarcely even a person in the boulevards. The city was completely still. It had seen in the three days previous probably the greatest exodus in the history of the world. The ordinary population had shrunk over a million. The last of the American tourists left that morning for Havre. The railroad communications to the north were in the hands of the German army. There were no telegraph communications. Even the telephone was rigidly restricted. The censor made the sending of cables almost an impossibility. We were in a city detached—apart from the rest of the world.
That morning, at the headquarters of the military government, we were advised to get out quickly—on that same day in fact—or take our own chances by remaining. Possibly all the bridges and roads leading out of the city might be blown up before next morning. Uhlans had been seen in the forest of Montmorency, only ten miles away. It seemed that Paris, which has supplied so much drama to the world's history, was about to add another chapter, and the odds were that it would be a final one.
So, as I have said, I sat with my fellow journalists on theterrasseof the Café Napolitain that fateful afternoon—and waited. That is why we were there—to wait. Several times we thought our waiting was rewarded, and we strained our ears. For we were waiting to hear the guns—the guns of the German attack. Through that entire afternoon, not one of us, singly or in partnership, would have offered ten cents for the city of Paris. We felt in our souls that it was doomed. It was an afternoon to have lived—even though nothing happened.
Toward nightfall we learned that the German forces had suddenly diverted their march to the southeast. We sat on ourterrasseand wondered. That night every auto-taxi in the city was conveying a portion of General Maunoury's army out of the north gates, to fall on the enemy's right flank. The next morning, bright and early, those of us who were astir, heard very faintly—so faintly we could scarcely believe, but we heard nevertheless, the opening guns of the battle of the Marne.
I know only one journalist who actually saw the battle of the Marne. I know several who said they saw it, but I did not believe them, and I know better than to believe them now. Of course there are French journalists who took a military part in the battle, but they have not yet had opportunity to chronicle their impressions—those of them who live. This one journalist saw the battle as a prisoner with his own army; he was lugged along with them clear to the Aisne.
The week following the German retreat to the Aisne, I was permitted to visit the field of glory. It was only after skilful maneuvres and great difficulties that I secured a military pass. And then my pass was canceled after I had been out of Paris only three days—and I was sent back under a military escort. But I saw the battlefield before the hand of the restorer reached it.
The trees still lay where they fell, cut down by shells. Broken cannon and aeroplanes were in the ditches and in the fields. Unused German ammunition and food supplies were strewn about, showing where the enemy had been forced to a hasty retreat. Sentries guarded every cross roads. The dead, numbering thousands, lay unburied and dotted the plain as far as the eye could see. It was still the field of glory. It was still wet with blood.
We who took that trip were thrilled by all the silent evidence of the mighty struggle that had taken place there only a few days—only a few hours before. It was easy for us to picture the mammoth combat, the battle of the millions, acrossthat wonderful, beautifully undulating plain. The war was terrible—true. But it was glorious. The men who died there were heroes. Our emotions were almost too much for us. And in the very near distance the artillery still thundered both night and day.
On the third of February, 1915, five months from the time I sat on theterrasseof the Café Napolitain waiting to hear the guns, I travel for a second time over the battlefield of the Marne.
This time I do not have a military pass. It is no longer necessary. The valley of the Marne is no longer in the zone of operations. I go out openly in an automobile. There are no sentries to block the way. The road is perfectly safe; so safe that I take my wife with me to show her some of the devastations of war. She is probably the first of the visitors to pass across that famous battlefield, perhaps soon to be overrun by thousands.
Our car climbs the steep hill beyond Meaux, which is the extreme edge of the battlefield, about ten in the morning; and during the day circuits about half the area of the fighting, a distance of about seventy-five miles—or a hundred miles.
The "Field of Five Thousand Dead" is whatthe majority of the tourists will probably call the battlefield of the Marne, because of the tragic toll of life taken on that one particular rolling bit of meadow.
We stop at this field in the morning soon after leaving Meaux. As we look across it we see none of the signs of conflict that I had witnessed in September. There are none of the ruined accouterments of war. No horses lie on their backs, four legs sticking straight in the air. There are no human forms in huddled and grotesque positions in the ravines and on the flat. True, every tree bears the mark of bullets, every wall has been shattered by shells, but these signs are not overpowering evidences of massive conflict. There is nothing to make vivid the fearful charge of the Zouaves against the flower of Von Kluck's army only five months before.
Yes—there is something. As we look more closely we see far away a cluster of little rude black wood crosses. They are not planted on mounds, they just stick up straight from the level ground. There are other little clusters throughout the field. Each cross marks a grave. Each grave contains from a dozen to fifty bodies. Together the crosses mark the total of five thousand dead.
An old woman hobbles along the main road. She looks at us curiously and stops beside the car. I ask if we can go close to the little black crosses. She replies that we can but that the fields are very muddy. I ask if any of the graves are marked with the names of the fallen soldiers. She shakes her head. No, they are the unknown dead. The regiments that fought across that field are known—that is all. There are both French and German dead. The relatives of course know that their men were in those regiments and they may assume, if they have not received letters from them recently, that they have been buried there—out on that vast, undulating, wind swept plain under one of the little black crosses. But, of course, one can never be sure. They might not be dead at all—only prisoners—or again, they might have died somewhere else. It is all very confusing and vague—what happens to the men who no longer send letters home. It is safe to believe they are just dead—to determine where they died is difficult.
The old woman suggests that we visit the little village graveyard, at the corner of the field. The Zouave officers are buried there—those who were recognized as officers. Some English had also been found and carried there. She is the caretakerof the little graveyard. She will show it to us. She says that it is much more interesting than the field. The field is much too muddy.
The world is as still as the death all around us when we enter that little country graveyard. It has been trampled by a multitude. The five months that have elapsed and the hard work of the little old woman have not destroyed the signs of conflict there. But the time has taken the glory. The low stone wall that surrounds the place has been used as a barricade by the Zouaves. It is pierced with holes for their rifles. In many places portions of the wall are missing, showing where the shells have struck.
In the center of the yard, one of them has opened a grave. It is a child's grave. I look down into the hole about three feet below the muddy surface of the yard. I see a weather-beaten headstone. It bears the child's name. A hundred years, according to date, that stone has silently borne witness of the few years of life before death, and then it has been rudely crushed into the earth on a glorious day in September. The graves of the soldiers who died there that same glorious day are all fresh mounds. There are only twenty or thirty mounds, but five hundred dead are buried beneath them. Above themounds are freshly painted crosses. On some of them are roughly printed the names of the fallen officers. On several are wreaths or artificial flowers—beads in the shape of violets and yellow porcelain immortelles. In one corner under a little cross is inscribed the name of an English lieutenant of dragoons—aged twenty. The old caretaker says that his family may take his body to England when the war is over—but, of course, he is not buried in a coffin—just put into the ground on the spot where he was found clutching a fragment of his sword in his hand.
We drive away to the north. On both sides of the road little clusters of black crosses are planted in the fields. Several times we pass great charred patches on the earth. These are the places where the Germans burned their dead before retreating. There are trenches too—trenches and the dead. There are old trenches and new—those made in a few hours while both armies alternately advanced and retreated, and those which the French engineers have made since for use if the Germans again advance.
We are a dozen miles from the river Aisne when our chauffeur stops. If we go nearer we will be in "the zone of operations" where passes are rigidly required—where if one does not possess a pass one is under rigid suspicion. We do not take the chance of advancing further.
We are in a devastated village. We have passed through many but this one seems worse than the others. The church has been demolished and two-thirds of the houses gutted by shells and fire. The place is almost deserted by the inhabitants. When we halted our car there was not the sound of a living thing. Then a few scare-crow children gathered and examined us curiously. We examine the remnants of the House of God. It has doubtless been used as a fortress. Bloody uniforms are scattered among the tumbled stones. Five bodies are rotting underneath the altar. Our minds have gone morbid by the horror. The chauffeur turns the car about. An old man comes from the ruins of a shop. He asks if we want to buy souvenirs. The word "souvenirs" halts us. We wonder how many thousand will be sold in this village, and in all the villages during the years following the war. I recall that only a few years ago one might buy "authentic souvenirs of the battle of Waterloo." The old man lugs forth a German helmet and the cartridge of a French shell—one of the famous "seventy-fives." He asks if we are Americans. Then he places a value of five dollars on the helmet andone dollar for the cartridge. We think that the thrifty inhabitants of these villages may yet triumph over the devastation of war if they lay in sufficient stock of souvenirs. Our chauffeur informs us that we can pick up all we desire in the fields, and we take to the road again.
We stop the car beside a large open meadow a few miles south. The field contains the same clusters of crosses. Part of it is plowed ground and is soggy from the rains. We stumble along it, mud to our shoe tops. We stop beside the crosses. They do not mark all the graves. I suddenly feel my feet sink in the mud. I hastily free myself. My wife asks me what is the matter, and I rush away further into the field. I have accidentally stepped into a grave—the mud being so soft—and have felt my boot touch something. As I looked down I saw a couple of inches of smeared, muddy, gray cloth.
We leave the plowed ground and come into a field of stubble. We stand silent a moment at the top of a knoll. The short winter day is dying rapidly. The horizon for the moment seems lost in cold blue vapors. It seems appropriate to the place—it is like battle smoke.
I stoop over to pick up a shrapnel ball imbedded in the mud. My wife seizes me by the arm. "Listen," she whispers. The gloom of dusk is creeping about us. "Did you hear?" she asks. Then we hear. "Boom, boo-o-m, boom, boo-o-om." It is quite as faint as the opening sounds of the battle of the Marne to the early risers in Paris. But it is quite as distinct. We have just heard the guns which are still disputing the possession of the Aisne.
The chauffeur is signaling to us. The wind sweeps over the desolate field with a few drops of rain. We make a detour near a haystack. Close to the base—almost under it, I pick up torn strips of gray uniform. They are covered with blood. There is also a battered brass belt buckle, and a bent canteen—evidence of the ghastly and lonely tragedy enacted there. A few feet away looms through the dark the usual black wood cross of the field of glory.
The chauffeur has lighted the lamps on the car. We hear the sound of the engine as we hasten through the mud. We are surfeited with devastation, with horror, and with the field of glory. We tell him to hasten toward Meaux where we will take the next train for Paris. He drives us swiftly into the coming night over the hill that looks upon the "Field of Five Thousand Dead." There we stop a moment to see the last strugglesof the descending sun tipping the forests on the horizon with rosy flames.
We return by a different road through another devastated village. It is not really a village—just a large farmstead—a model farm it was called before the war. Now the stone walls have crumbled. The buildings are twisted skeletons of iron bars—all that withstood the appetite of the flames. Their outlines are vivid black against the sky. They seem to writhe in the wind.
A man and a woman and little girl stand in the road. The car stops and we get out. The man is the owner of the ruin. The woman and child are his wife and daughter. They had fled when the Germans approached. After the glorious victory they returned to their home. The woman asks us to enter the broken gateway. At one end of the walled yard was the house. A broken portion of it remains. The man had boarded up the holes and the cracks in the walls and the empty window frames. He explains that the place had been taken and retaken four times before the French were finally victorious. He tells us of the toll that death had taken in the yard. The woman tells of bodies found in the house—so many in the parlor—so many in the bedroom—so many lying on the stairs.
We walked back to the road where the side lamps of the car cast flickering flames into the night. The chauffeur turns on the electric head lamps that throw a blinding light fifty feet away. The little girl dances in front of them and across the road to a mound of mud. She laughs. Her mother asks her why she is happy. "Oh, the lights," she calls back. "It's like Christmas—and folks are here." She picks up a stone and throws it toward the mound of mud. I noticed that the mound is regular in form—and oblong, about a dozen by six feet in size. Around it runs a border of flat stones. They are set on the corners and arranged in angular criss-cross lines such as a child builds with his toy wooden blocks. We watch the little girl as she kicks one of the stones loose. Her mother calls to her and she hastily puts it back in position. A tall tree casts a shadow across the center of the mound. Through the top of the tree the rising wind begins to sob, and the rain drops blow into our faces. The mother again calls to the child, who comes back across the road stubbing her toes into the mud.
The chauffeur starts the engine and turns the front of the car so that the headlights are direct on the mound, with its border of stones arranged like toy blocks. The shadow of the tall tree pointsin another direction. Where it had been—where I could not see before—I now see a black wooden cross. "How many under that?" I asked the man casually. "Eighteen or twenty-two," he answers, "I forget. We found them here in the road."
We jump into the car and leave the field of glory in the dark.
PART THREE
THE ARM OF MILITARY AUTHORITY
THE AUTHOR'S PASS
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIELD OF BATTLE
"Tosee the damage done by the Germans in unfortified villages."
This was the quest that first passed me into the zone of military operations, that first landed me on the field of battle, and gave me my first experience under fire.
Ambassador Herrick had procured a pass for me and two other Paris correspondents; it covered also an automobile and chauffeur, and was signed by General Galliéni, the Military Governor and Commander of the Army of Paris. Mr. Herrick explained that he had requested it, because we had not attempted to leave the city without credentials—as had many correspondents—"by the back door," as he said. He considered that it was time for some of us to go out openly "by the front door," in order to later tell the truth to America.
We took the pass thankfully. It was good for a week and would take us "anywhere on the fieldof battle." We have always been thankful that this pass was handed to us by Ambassador Herrick in his private room at the American Embassy, and that it was requested of General Galliéni by the Ambassador himself—that it was his idea and not ours. For later it developed that a pass from General Galliéni was not sufficient to take us "anywhere on the field of battle"—the pass itself disappeared and we came back to Paris as prisoners of war. We were told that we were arrested because we were "at the front without credentials." Our defense was clear, because, we argued, when an ambassador asks for something, a record of that request exists. Ambassador Herrick made a similar declaration, and we were not only released but "expressions of regret" for our "detention" were tendered us.
We rented a car and a French chauffeur. We wore rough clothes and heavy overcoats, we took extra socks, collars, soap, shaving utensils and candles. As food we took sardines, salmon, cocoa, biscuits, coffee, sausage, bread, bottles of wine and water. We also bought an alcohol lamp, aluminum plates, collapsible drinking cups and jack-knives. At four o'clock that afternoon we started.
In retrospect I divide the ensuing days into two parts, and in the latter part I believe that the high water mark of my existence was reached—at least the high tide from the standpoint of new sensations, excitement, and genuine thrills. To digress for an instant, I have somewhere read the account of a person, a well-known novelist, who visited the French trenches months after the period I shall describe; when he got away from his censor and was safe back in America, he reported that no correspondents have really seen anything in this war—and that many of their stories are fakes. Some correspondents, including this one, have not seen much. Some stories have been fakes, including the one which he told. I wish it were permissible to enumerate some of the fakes in detail—but I wish for the sake of this person that he had been along in either the second or the first portions of that trip;—when, just a few miles outside Paris, we first heard the Sentries in the Dark—when, the next morning we met the first batch of Wounded Who Could Walk—and later, when we ate luncheon to an orchestra of bursting shells, a luncheon ordered quietly—to be eaten quietly, during a Lull in the Bombardment.
(A)Sentries in the Dark
The car whizzed down the straight country road. We were trying to make night quarters thirty kilometers away. The dusk was already upon us—and the rain. Every night for a week the rain had come at dusk. We were well behind the battle lines, but the Germans had held that countryside only a few days before. Many of them still lurked in the dense woods. At dusk they were apt to shoot at passing motors. If they killed the occupants, they secured clothes and credentials and attempted cutting through to their own lines. The night before, a French general had been killed on the road we were passing. Therefore it was not well to be abroad at dusk, too far northward on the battlefield of the Aisne. But we had cast a tire and lost considerable time. It was necessary to go forward or strike back toward Paris. To remain in the open held an additional risk of being stopped by a British patrol—we were near their lines—and the British were not so polite as the French about requisitioning big touring cars. Our credentials were French.
So we dipped into the night down a long road that ran between solid shadows of towering trees,behind which ran the continuous hedge of the French countryside, making an ideal hiding place for enemies. The rain increased and so did the cold. Our French driver struggled into an ulster and we crouched low in the body of the limousine, watching the whirling road revealed by our powerful headlights fifty yards in front of the car.
Suddenly came a sharp cry. The chauffeur crashed on the brakes and the car slid to a standstill. I knew that cry from many a novel I had read, but I had never actually heard it before. It was the famous "Qui vive" or "Who goes there?" of the French army. We sat waiting. We saw no one. The rain poured down.
The cry was repeated. A soldier stepped into the road and stood in the light of our lamps about thirty feet away. His rifle was half thrown across his arm and half aimed towards us. He was a tall, handsome chap wearing a long coat buttoned back at the bottom away from his muddy boots. His cap was jammed carelessly over one eye. He bent forward and peered at us under our lights, which half blinded him. Then we saw two dusky shadows at either side of the car. We caught the steel flash of bayonets turned toward us.
The chauffeur saw them too, for he cried out nervously, "Non, non!" The soldier in the roadignored him. In the dramatic language of France his "Avancez—donnez le mot de la nuit" sounded far more impressive than the English equivalent about advancing to give the countersign. He spoke the words simply, a little monotonously, with an air of having done it many times during his period of watch. Then he bent lower and peered more intently under the lights, brushing one arm across his face as though the pelting rain also interfered with his business of seeing in the night.
The chauffeur stated that we carried the signed pass of General Galliéni. If we had mentioned the Mayor of Chicago we would not have made less impression. The ghostly sentries at the sides of the car did not budge. The patrol in the center of the road in the same almost monotone announced that one of us would descend. One would be sufficient. The others might keep the shelter of the car. But he would see these credentials from General X——. If to him they did not appear in order, our fate was a matter within his discretion. We were traveling an important highway and his orders were definite. So the member of our party who carried the important slip of paper descended.
The sentry in the road moved further into thelight. As he read the pass he sheltered it from the rain under the cape of his coat. The guards at the sides of the car remained as though built in position. Then the leader handed back the paper and brought his hand to salute. The others immediately broke their pose; moved into the light and likewise saluted. The tension relieved, we all felt friendly. As we started forward I held a newspaper out of the window and three hands grasped it simultaneously. We had hundreds of newspapers, for some one had told us how welcome they would be at the front.
At an intersection of roads a couple of miles further on, the rain was pelting down so fiercely that we did not clearly hear the "qui vive." The chauffeur desperately called out not to shoot as a file of soldiers suddenly swung across the road with rifles leveled. On their leader we then tried an experiment which we afterwards followed religiously. We handed over a newspaper with our pass. To our surprise he turned first to the government war communiqué on the first page and read it through, grunting his satisfaction meanwhile, before he even glanced at the document which held our fate and on which the rain was making great inky smears. Then he saluted and we drove on rapidly—everybody smiling.
The road then led up an incline through a small village that was filled with soldiers. A patrol halted us as usual and informed us that there was no hotel within another five miles, and possibly even that hotel might be closed. At this news our excitable chauffeur immediately killed his engine and the car started slipping backward down the incline. Fifty soldiers leaped forward and held it while the brakes were applied. We distributed a score of newspapers and as many cigarettes before we could get under way.
We passed no more patrols, but when our lights finally picked out the first signs of the next village they also brought into bold relief a pile of masonry completely blocking the road. We stopped. A villager loomed out of the dark at the side of the car and informed us that the road was barred because the bridge just beyond had been blown up and that we could not pass over the pontoon until morning. The inn, he said, had never been closed nor was its stock of tobacco yet exhausted. He offered to conduct us, and when the innkeeper—a very fat innkeeper—looked over our credentials from General Galliéni he insisted that certain guests should double up, in order to make room for us in the crowded place. He then called his wife, his daughter, his father and hisfather's wife, that they might be permitted the honor of shaking us by the hand, as he held aloft the candle, the flame of which flickered down the ancient stone corridor that led to our rooms.
(B)The Wounded Who Could Walk
We were crossing a battlefield four days old. It was remarkable how much it resembled the ordinary kind of field. The French had conquered quickly at this point and the dead had been buried. Except for frequent mounds of earth headed by sticks forming crosses; except for the marks of shrapnel in the roads and on the trees; except for the absence of every living thing, this countryside was at peace. The sun was shining. The frost had brought out flaming tints on the hills. It was glorious Indian summer.
The road we were motoring wound far away through the battlefield. For the armies had fought over a front of many miles. We traveled slowly. As we topped a rise and searched the valley below with our glasses, a mile away in the cup of the valley we saw a moving mass. It filled the roadway from hedge to hedge and appeared to be approaching us. We drove more slowly, stopping several times. The movement of the car made the glasses quiver and blur. Wesaw that the moving mass stretched back a considerable distance—perhaps the length of a city block. We stopped our engine and waited in the center of the road.
As the mass came nearer it outlined itself into men. We saw that they were soldiers; but we could not distinguish the uniform. So we waited. We even got our papers ready to show if necessary. Then we saw that the soldiers were not of the same regiment—that their uniforms were conglomerate. We saw the misfits of the French line regiments, the gay trappings of the Spahis and Chasseurs d'Afrique, the skirt trousers of the Zouaves, Turcos and Senegalese, the khaki of the English Tommies and the turbans of the Hindoos. But all these men in the varied costumes of the army of the Allies wore one common mark—a bandage. Arm or head or face was wrapped in white cloths, usually stained with blood. For these on whom we waited were the wounded who could walk. They were going from the battle trenches to somewhere in the rear.
The front rank glanced wonderingly at the big motor that blocked the center of the road and moved aside in either direction. Those behind did likewise, until there was a lane for the car to pass. But we waited. As the front rank camelevel with us, a dust-caked British Tommy, with a bloody bandage over one eye, winked his good one at us and touched his cap in salute. We took our hats off as the tragic crowd surrounded us. Tommy sat down on our running board and I handed him a cigarette.
The cigarette established cordial relations at once. Tommy's lean face was browned by the sun and streaked with dirt. About the bandage which encircled his head and crossed his right eye were cakes of dirt and clots of blood. His hair where his cap was pushed back was sand color and crinkly. The eye that turned up to me was pale blue and the skin just about it was white and blue veined.
"Is this Frawnce or is it Belgium?" he asked me. At my answer he squirmed around on the running board, calling to a companion in khaki just coming up—his arm in a sling—"'Ee says it's Frawnce." The other nodded indifferently and saluted us.
I asked the man about the battle, but he only stared. His friend on the running board turned his eye upward and said, "It's 'ell, that's wot it is." I replied that my question had to do with the course of the battle—which side was winning; and he too only stared at that. Then he arose andplodded on and I gave a cigarette to his companion.
A score of men stood about the front of the car where the chauffeur was busy handing out apples and pears. My companions were busy on the opposite side with a dozen French infantrymen, telling the latest news from Paris and giving out newspapers. I leaned over them, the box of cigarettes still in my hand. A tall Senegalese standing back from the group caught sight of the box and called out, "Cigarette, eh!" I motioned him to my side of the car. He came running weakly, followed at once by fifty others. I handed out until that box and several others that I dug from my valise were exhausted. I called several times that I had no more, but still they crowded about, stretching out their arms and crying, "Cigarette, eh?" One of my companions warned me that we might ourselves feel the want of tobacco—that money would not buy it in the country we were traversing, because it did not exist.
We still had a box of cigars and I had several loose in my pocket. The black face of a Turco appeared at the car window. One arm was in a sling and a bandage was wound about his brow. But his eyes shone brightly at the thought of tobacco, and at the smell of it now arising on allsides. He was tobacco hungry. He was more than that. He was tobacco starving. He poked his other arm into the car. I motioned him to crowd his entire bulk into the window so that the others would not see. Then I gave him a cigar. He hung over the car frame as I held out the lighted tip of my own cigar. He puffed a cloud into the interior. He looked at the cigar fondly and seemed to measure its length. It was a good cigar. If it had been a miserable cheroot his regard would have been the same. He took another puff, and drew a complete mouthful into his lungs. His cheeks bulged and his eyes glinted inwards as though he looked at the tip of his nose. I wondered how long he could keep that huge mouthful of smoke within him. Again he held the cigar close to his eyes and seemed to measure its length. It burned perfectly round and the ash was white and solid. Finally he poured forth the smoke from nose and mouth and ejaculated the only English word he knew—"good." I nodded and asked in French where he had been fighting. He cocked his head toward the fore part of the car and took another puff. I asked him where he had been wounded and he replied that he did not know but that it occurred in the trenches "là bas." I asked him how long he had been fightingin France—how long since he had left Africa, and he spread his arm far out to indicate that the time had been long. I asked him where he was going; he rolled his eyes to the rear of the car and said he did not know.
I sank back in my seat and he climbed down into the road. Most of the troop had limped off. To the few still lingering we indicated that our stock of things to give away was exhausted. They eyed us wistfully, then passed on.
The chauffeur asked if he should start the car, but some one said, "No, let's wait until they all pass." The rear guard straggled up; many were ready to drop with fatigue and pain and loss of blood. I asked a Britisher how long they had been on the road. He replied "since sunrise" and plodded stolidly on. It was then noon. Several sank down for moments under the trees by the roadside. A chasseur stopped and asked our chauffeur to tighten a thong of his bandage, which was stained with fresh blood. We asked him where they were going and he replied vaguely, "To the rear." "And what then?" one of us asked. "Oh! I hope we will all be fighting again soon," he replied. They were all like that. They wanted to be fighting again soon. They were not happy. They were not unhappy. They wereindifferent; more or less, made so by utter fatigue and the pain of their wounds. But they all wanted to be fighting again soon.
We watched them top the rise of the hill to disappear down the long road "to the rear." The last straggler, his head bound with white and red, vanished. They were all privates—all common men of all the world from Scotland to Hindustan. The majority were coming from and going they knew not where, and wanting to fight again for they knew not what—except possibly the men of France, who began to hear about this war in their cradles.
We cranked up the car.
(C)A Lull in the Bombardment
The sentry just outside the town advised us to right about face and travel the other direction. But he only advised us. Our credentials appeared in order and he did not feel that he could issue a command on the subject. In fact our credentials were very much in order. The sentry saluted us most respectfully; but his advice was wasted. We argued to ourselves that if we went to "the front" we must take a few chances.
So we entered Soissons—one of the most beautiful and historic towns in Northern France. Ithas now become even more historic; but its beauty has changed from the crumbling medieval. It is a ruin—more—a remnant of the Great War.
We did not notice this so much as we rode down the winding road to the outskirts. We did notice the unusual fall of autumn foliage. We commented on the early season; the preceding night had been frosty, following rain. Then we noticed many branches lying across the road. Many trees were chipped as with an ax, but the chipped places were high up—out of reach. We wondered why the trees were chipped so high. Then we skirted a great hole in the center of the road. A tree further on was cut off close to the ground. The truth came to us. The fallen leaves and the chipped places were the work of bullets—a multitude of bullets. The hole in the road and the fallen tree were the results of shells.
We saw horses lying in the fields. Their legs stuck rigidly into the air. Horses were lying along the roadside. Insects were crawling over them. Fallen trees lined the way into the town.
We turned into the main street and rattled over its cobblestones. We met no one. Crossing an open square we saw that over half the trees were down. Up a side street a house had fallen forward from its foundations and settled in acrumbled heap in the center of the road. The sun which had been shining brightly went behind a cloud. We stopped for a moment. We could hear the wind sighing in the tops of the remaining trees. Some one asked, "Is this Sunday?" and was answered, "No. It's Friday. Why?" He replied, "Because it is so still. Did you ever see a place where people live that is so completely silent?" "It reminds me of London on Good Friday—everybody gone to church," said another.
We drove on. A block along the main street a soldier in the French uniform of the line lounged in a doorway. His long blue overcoat flapped desolately over his baggy red trousers. His rifle leaned in the corner. We asked if any hotel remained open. He replied, "I don't know. Have you a cigarette?" I drew out a box and he ran to the car, seizing it as a hungry animal snatches food. He settled back into his doorway, smiling; then said in French argot which translated into American best reads: "Do you guys know you ain't safe here?" We smiled and waited explanation. But he merely shrugged his shoulders. We started the car.
More French soldiers lounged in doorways. Once we saw the white and frightened face of a woman peering at us from a window. She wasentirely incurious. Her gaze was dispassionate. She appeared to have not the slightest interest either in us or our big car, which surely was a rare sight in the streets of that town on that day. But the fright upon her face was stamped.
Several villagers stood at the next corner. They exhibited interest. We again asked about a hotel and one pointed to a building we had just passed. We noted that its doors and windows were barred; but we thought they might open up.
We asked, then, when the firing on the town had ceased. The man laughed. Anything so normal as a laugh seemed out of place in that ghastly silence. It grated. But it seemed that after all one might observe the function of laughing even during war. He informed us that the German gunners were probably at lunch. We asked the position of the French batteries, and as he pointed vaguely toward the south we realized that we were then in an advance position on the firing line—that the force of soldiers was only an outpost. The same man told us that the town had been under fire for eight days, that the French had shifted the position of their heavy guns and that the Germans were now trying to locate them. We returned to the hotel, stabled our automobile and ordered luncheon, which the landlord informedus would be ready in half an hour. So we continued the exploration of the town on foot.
The chauffeur did not accompany us, for there was a captured German automobile in the barn that interested him greatly. Under the seat he found the army papers of the German driver. He advised us not to touch them. They were dangerous. If found in our possession we might be arrested as spies. So we dropped them back under the seat, and went out into the market place.
As is usual in small French cities the market consisted of a large building entirely open at the ends and fronting on a large square paved with cobbles. We walked into the building; it was deserted and our footsteps echoed. In the center was a pile of masonry, beneath a large hole in the roof torn by a shell. The explosion had cracked the side walls. In one of the cracks was jammed the top of a meat table, forcibly caught up from the floor and hurled there. A little further on a shell had passed through both side walls, leaving clean holes large enough for a man to stand.
I stood in one of them and saw where the shell had spent its force on a residence across the square. It had caught the house plumb on a corner and at the floor of the second story, so that the floor sagged down into the room below. Theroom above had been a bedchamber. The entire side wall was gone, so all that remained of the intimacies of the room were exposed. The bed with the covers thrown back as though the occupant quitted it hurriedly had slipped forward until stopped by a broken bit of the wall. From another jagged piece of masonry that formed part of the wall the blue skirt of a child flapped desolately over the sidewalk. We left the market building and stood in the center of the square looking down the six streets that emptied into it. They were narrow, winding streets, and we could not see far. But in all we could see the ruin—the crumbled masonry and walls blackened by fire.
We looked at our watches and hurried toward the hotel. Entering the street, about half a block distant, we stopped to look down a side alley. As we looked we heard what seemed to be a shrill whistle, pitched high and very prolonged. It seemed like the shriek of a suddenly rising wind; but it was followed by a dull boom and the crash of falling masonry. We looked behind us and saw clouds of smoke and dust rising a short distance beyond the market place. We ran toward the hotel. At the entrance we again heard the high-pitched screaming whistle, ending in a crash much more acute. "That struck nearer," one of usobserved. But we did not wait to see. As we entered the hall, the landlord remarked, "Ça commence encore."
We filed into the dining room in time to see him carefully place the soup upon the table.
CHAPTER IX
"DETAINED" BY THE COLONEL
Wehad just passed a sentry on the outskirts of a village. He had brought his rifle to an imposing salute as he read the name upon our military credentials. One of my companions, smiling fatuously, remarked:
"Well, fellows, this is a real pass. It gets us anywhere."
At that very instant the Colonel leaped on the running board of our automobile.
He too was smiling, but not fatuously. Although he was French he was sufficiently an Anglophile to affect a monocle, and this gave a chilling, glassy effect to his smile.
"Your pass!" he said, stretching out his hand, at the same time signaling the chauffeur to stop. The pass was given him, one of us explaining that we had just shown it to a sentry, who had permitted us to enter the town.
"Ah, quite so," he murmured. He carefully read the pass, screwing his monocle into his eye."Ah,quiteso. But you will please follow me." He signaled us to get out of the car and directed the chauffeur to turn to the side of the road and to remain there. Then he led the way down a narrow lane. At the door of a small house he told us to wait. He left the door open and we saw him pass down the hall and into a rear room. Then came a burst of laughter.
"More 'journalistes Américains,'" we heard; and then another peal of merriment. We stood about the doorstep and wondered.
The Colonel reappeared and again directed us to follow. This time he led the way to a barn a short distance along the road. A cow yard surrounded the barn, enclosed by a high stone wall. At the gate stood a soldier with fixed bayonet. On the gate-post was written a single word.
I had been suspecting for several minutes that a hitch had occurred in our plans for going war-corresponding. My companions had similar ideas, but we had kept silent. Now, as we stared at this word written on the wall, I turned to the chap who had spoken so confidently about our pass.
"You were right about the pass," I said. "It gets us anywhere."
For the word written on the wall was "Prison."
The Colonel stopped at the gate of the cow yard, twirled his mustache, and screwed his monocle. He bowed. We bowed. Then we preceded him through the gate.
A derisive yell greeted us from a quartet seated on a wooden bench outside the door of the barn. The quartet arose and came towards us laughing.
"You know these men?" asked the Colonel.
Oh, yes, we knew them. They too were newspaper men, at least three of them. Two represented Italian papers, one an Amsterdam journal. The fourth was an Italian nobleman whose name was frequently in the social columns because of his dinners at the Ritz and Armenonville. He explained that he had accompanied the others as their gentleman chauffeur, driving his own big car. It had been requisitioned for the army at the same moment they themselves were escorted into the cow yard three days before. The Colonel stood by during our greetings, still twirling his mustache. He addressed the quartet.
"Since you know these men," he said, indicating us, "you will please explain to them where they will sleep and the arrangements for food."
Then he turned to us, at the same time pointing to a corner of the building nearest the wall gate. He said:
"You are permitted to remain out of doors as much as you like, but you are not to pass that corner. If you do—well—" a shrug and the monocled smile, "the soldier at the gate will probably shoot."
The sage of our party became sarcastic.
"I presume that the soldier's gun is loaded," he remarked.
"Oh, yes," the Colonel still smiled. "The gun is always ready—also the bayonet—it would be regrettable—" again he shrugged his shoulders.
"But why are we prisoners," the sage one demanded, "and where is our pass? If we cannot go on we will go back to Paris. What right have you to keep us here?"
The Colonel raised his eyebrows and spread out his hands. His tones were so polite as to be almost apologetic.
"Right?" he questioned. "My dear fellow, it is simply a question of theforce majeure. And besides you are not prisoners."
"Not prisoners?" we shouted in unison. "If we are not prisoners, then what are we?"
"You are not prisoners," the Colonel insisted. "You are simply detained. You can neither go forward nor back until I receive further instructions concerning you. For the moment you are my guests."
He bowed politely and gracefully.
"And the soldier with the rifle? And the dead line at the corner of the building?"
"Ah, quite so—quite so," murmured the Colonel; then bowed again to us and went out the gate.
"Consequential little cuss," sputtered one of our trio.
"Better play up to him," advised one of the Italians. "We have been here three days. Come see where we sleep—"
They led the way to a stone outhouse near one end of the stable. A soldier with loaded rifle sat in the door. We peered within. Two cow stalls heaped with filthy straw. One of the stalls was empty; in the other we could dimly discern some huddled forms.
"We sleep in the empty one," our confrères informed us. "You will sleep there too."
"And those in the other stall?" I asked.
"Oh, those! They are German spies captured during the day. They take them out every morning—they don't come back—fresh ones take their places."
I shuddered. "What becomes of them?" No one answered and the other Italian said: "Don't talk about such things. We too are prisoners, you know."
"Oh, no," said some one. "We are not prisoners—we are merely detained—guests of the Colonel."
That evening the Colonel clattered into the yard on horseback. About twenty of his men were loafing about. On his appearance there was a great to-do. They sprang stiffly to attention in lines on either side of the horse. I learned later that this was the regular evening ceremony when the Colonel returned from his ride. I had to admit that he cut a fine figure on a horse. His body was slender and very straight. His hair slightly grizzled, his face grim, but with always that glassy, haughty smile. He wore high boots of the finest leather. His spurs jingled. His uniform was immaculate. His cape swung jauntily over one shoulder. His sword clanged. His medals were resplendent. His head was held high as he rigidly returned the salutes. At every moment I expected to hear the orchestra's opening bars, and the Colonel proclaim in a fine baritone, "Oh, the Colonel of the regimentam I," with the soldier chorus echoing, "the Colonel of the regiment is he."
However, the Colonel dismounted into very real pools of mud and manure.
"Les correspondants Américains!" he shouted.
We lined up—hopefully—before him.
"Your automobile," he informed us curtly, "has become the property of the army. I have directed that your overcoats and other belongings, and the food you carry with you, be brought to you here. You may eat this food and also draw your daily ration of the army fare."
This was a concession; and one of the Italians, who had drawn near, immediately asked for another.
"Now that there are seven of us," he asked "can't we have an audience with the commanding general of this division?"
The Colonel considered, then said: "If you ask an audience for only one of your number, you may draw up a petition."
The Italian, having made the suggestion, wrote the petition, we all signed it and an hour later he was led away between files of soldiers to see the General. Returning, after only a few minutes, he said the General had received him courteously butwould give him no satisfaction, saying that he was waiting for instructions concerning us from General Joffre.
There was nothing to do then but make the best of it.
At six o'clock the Colonel's cook informed us that we could go to the great open oven in the cow yard and draw our evening rations. It was lucky that we had our aluminum plates, for there were no others for us. We filed across the yard with the soldiers and got a mixture of beans and beef that was decidedly unpalatable even though we flavored it with our own wine and bread. As we finished it, our chauffeur, a trench "reformë," appeared in the kitchen. He told us he was not a prisoner but was "detained" in the town with the car. He asked for a bottle of our wine, which we gave him, with a cake of chocolate, and a bottle of our water.
My two friends and myself then discussed our sleeping problem. We had resolved not to sleep in that outhouse with the Germans. When the Colonel next came into the yard we tackled him, asking if we might not have the freedom of the town under parole, in order to find beds.
He said he could not consider it.