KING GEORGE and Queen Mary have been seeing war at close range. Together they made an eleven days’ visit to the British troops in France, and while there the King experienced the sensation of being under fire. While the Queen devoted herself to the hospitals and the sick and wounded, the King was shown all the latest devices for killing and maiming the enemy. It was soon after seeing what would happen to the Teutons that he decided to drop his Teutonic name and become Mr. Windsor. Says a dispatch from the British headquarters in the New YorkSun:
On the first morning after his arrival in France, King George visited the Messines Ridge sector of the front, climbing the ridge while the Germans were shelling the woods just to his left. He inspected the ground over which the Irish troops, men from the north and the south, fought so gallantly side by side during the taking of the Messines Ridge, and where Major William Redmond fell. While the King was doing this the Germans began shelling places on the ridge which he had left but half an hour before. The King visited also Vimy Ridge, from which he could see the German lines about Lens, with British shells breaking on them.
For the benefit of the King a special show was staged that he might witness “that black art of frightfulness which has steadily increased the horrors of war since the day when the enemy let loose clouds of poisoned gasupon the soldiers and civilians in Ypres,” says Philip Gibbs in the PhiladelphiaPublic Ledger:
As soon as the King arrived on the field there was a sound of rushing air, and there shot forth a blast of red flame out of black smoke to a great distance and with a most terrifying effect. It came from an improved variety of flame projector. Then the King saw the projection of burning oil, burst out in great waves of liquid fire. A battalion of men would be charred like burned sticks if this touched them for a second. There was another hissing noise, and there rolled very sluggishly over the field a thick, oily vapor, almost invisible as it mixed with the air, and carrying instant death to any man who should take a gulp of it. To such a thing have all of us come in this war for civilization.
The most spectacular show here was the most harmless to human life, being a new form of smoke barrage to conceal the movement of troops on the battlefield.
From this laboratory of the black art the King went to one of those fields where the machinery of war is beautiful, rising above the ugly things of this poor earth with light and grace, for this was an air-drome. As he came up, three fighting planes of the fastest British type went up in chase of an imaginary enemy. They arose at an amazing speed and shot across the sky-line like shadows racing from the sun. When they came back those three boys up there seemed to go a little mad and played tricks in the air with a kind of joyous carelessness of death. They tumbled over and over, came hurtling down in visible corkscrews, looped the loop very close to the earth, flattened out after headlong dives, and rose again like swallows. The King wasinterested in the ages of these pilots and laughed when they confessed their youth, for one was nineteen and another twenty.
The antics of the “tanks” furnished the King with a great deal of amusement. Leaving the air-drome, he was driven to a sunken field, very smooth and long, between two high wooded banks. Says Mr. Gibbs:
Here there was a great surprise and a great sensation, for just as the King stepped out of his car a young tree in full foliage on the left of the field up a high bank toppled forward slowly and then fell with a crash into the undergrowth. Something was moving in the undergrowth, something monstrous. It came heaving and tearing its way through the bushes, snapping off low branches and smashing young saplings like an elephant on stampede. Then it came into sight on top of the bank, a big gray beast, with a blunt snout, nosing its way forward and all tangled in green leaves and twigs. It was old brother tank doing his stunt before the King.
From the far end of a long, smooth field came two other twin beasts of this ilk, crawling forward in a hurry as though hungry for human blood. In front of their track, at the other end of the field, were two breastworks built of sand-bags covering some timbered dugouts and protected from sudden attack by two belts of barbed wire. The two tanks came along like hippopotamuses on a spree, one of them waiting for the other when he lagged a little behind. They hesitated for a moment before the breastworks as if disliking the effort of climbing them, then heaved themselves up, thrust out their snouts, got their hind quarters on the move, and waddled to the top. Under their vast weight the sand-bagsflattened out, the timber beneath slipped and cracked, and the whole structure began to collapse, and the twins plunged down on the other side and advanced to attack the barbed wire.
Another tank now came into action from the far end of the field, bearing the legend on its breast of “Faugh-a-ballagh,” which, I am told, is Irish for “get out of the way.” It was the Derby winner of the tanks’ fleet. From its steel flanks guns waggled to and fro, and no dragon of old renown looked half so menacing as this. St. George would have had no chance against it. But King George, whose servant it was, was not afraid, and with the Prince of Wales he went through the steel trap-door into the body of the beast. For some time we lost sight of the King and Prince, but after a while they came out laughing, having traveled around the field for ten minutes in the queerest car on earth.
The great thrill of the day came later. Through the woods of a high bank on the left came a tank, looking rather worse for wear, as though battered in battle.
It came forward through the undergrowth and made for the edge of the bank, where there was a machine gun emplacement in a bomb-proof shelter, whose steep bank was almost perpendicular. It seemed impossible that any old tank should entertain a notion of taking that jump, but this tank came steadily on until its snout was well over the bank and steadily on again with that extraordinary method of progression in which the whole body of the beast moves from the nose end upward until it seems to have a giraffe’s neck and very little else. That very little else was sitting on the top of the emplacement while the forward part of the tank waspoised in space regarding the setting sun. However, without any hesitation, the whole mass moved on, lurched out, and nose-dived.
Good Lord! it was then that the thrill came. The tank plunged down like a chunk of cliff as it fell, went sideways and lost its balance, and, as near as anything could be, almost turned turtle. It righted itself with a great jerk at the nick of time just before it took the earth below and shaved by a hair’s breadth an ammunition dump at the bottom of the drop.
It was the finest tank trick I ever saw, and it was greeted with laughter and cheers. The King, however, and other spectators were rather worried about the lads inside. They must have taken a mighty toss. No sound came from the inside of the tank, and for a moment some of us had a vision of a number of plucky fellows laid out unconscious within those steel walls. The door opened and we could see their feet standing straight, which was a relief.
“Let them all come out,” said the King, laughing heartily. And out they all tumbled, a row of young fellows as merry and bright as air pilots after a good landing.
Lady (entering bank, very businesslike)—“I wish to get a Liberty Loan bond for my husband.”
Clerk—“What size, please?”
Lady—“Why, I don’t believe I know, exactly, but he wears a fifteen shirt.”