[2]Of six hundred who were gassed that night, more than five hundred are out of danger.
[2]Of six hundred who were gassed that night, more than five hundred are out of danger.
2nd November, 1915.
Two or three days ago all along the front of the battle began the great festival in honour of our soldiers' graves. No matter where they lie, grouped around churches in the ordinary village cemeteries, ranged in rows with military precision in little special cemeteries consecrated to them, or even situated singly at the side of a road, in a corner of a wood, or alone and lost in the midst of fields, everywhere, seen from afar off, under the gloomy sky of these November days and against the greyish background of the countryside, they attract the eyes with the brilliant newness of their decorations. Each grave is decked with at least four fine tricolours,their flagstaffs planted in the ground, two at the head, two at the foot, and an infinite number of flowers and wreaths tied with ribbons. It was the officers and the comrades of our dead soldiers who subscribed together to give them all this, and who, sometimes in spite of great difficulties, sent to the neighbouring towns for the decorations, and then arranged them all with such pious care, even on the graves of those of whom little was known, and of those poor men, few in number, whose very names have perished.
Here in this village where I chance to be staying in the course of my journey, the cemetery is built in terraces, and forms an amphitheatre on the side of a hill, and the corner dedicated to the soldiers is high up, visible to all the neighbourhood. There are fifteen of these graves, each with its four flags, making sixty flags in all. And in the bitter autumn wind they flutteralmost gaily, unceasingly, all these strips of bunting, they wanton in the air, intermingle, and their bright colours shine out more conspicuously. For the matter of that, no three other colours in combination set off one another so gaily as our three dear colours of France.
And these tombs, moreover, have such quantities and quantities of flowers, dahlias, chrysanthemums and roses, that they seem to be covered with one and the same richly decorated carpet. During these days of festival, the rest of the cemetery is also very full of flowers, but it looks dull and colourless compared with that corner sacred to our soldiers. It is this favoured corner which is visible at first sight, from a distance, from all the roads leading to the village, and wayfarers would ask themselves:
"What festival can they be celebrating with all those flags fluttering in the air?"
Two days before, I remember coming to see the preparations for these ingenious decorations.Chasseurs, with their hands full of bunches of flowers, were working there rapidly and thoughtfully, speaking in low tones. In the distance could be heard, though much muffled, the orchestra of the incessant battle in which the magnificent, great voice of our heavy artillery predominated; it seemed like the muttering of a storm all along the distant horizon. It was very gloomy in that cemetery, under an overcast sky, whence fell a semi-darkness already wintry in aspect. But the zeal of thesechasseurs, who were decking the tombs so well, must yet have solaced the souls of the youthful dead with a little tender gaiety.
And what beautiful, moving Masses were sung for them all along the front on the day of their festival. All the little churches—those at least that the barbarianshave not destroyed—had been decorated that day with all that the villages could muster in the way of flags, banners, tapers and wreaths. And they were too small, these churches, to hold the crowds that flocked to them. There were officers, soldiers, civil population, women mostly in mourning, whose eyes under their veils were reddened with secret tears. Some of the soldiers, of their own accord, desiring to honour the souls of their comrades with a very special concert, had taken pains to learn the Judgment hymns, theDies iræ, theDe profundis, and their voices, unskilfully led though they were, vibrated impressively in the unison of plain-song, which the organ accompanied. Indeed what could better prepare them for the supreme sacrifice and for a death nobly met than these prayers, this music and even these flowers?
They sang this morning, these improvisedchoristers, with a solemn transport. Then after Mass, in spite of the icy rain and the muddy roads, the crowds that issued from each church in procession betook themselves to the cemeteries, in attendance on the priests bearing the solemn crucifix. And again, as on the day of the funerals, all the little graves were blessed.
If I record these scenes, it is for the sake of mothers and wives and families, living far from here in other provinces of France, whose hearts no doubt grow heavier at the thought that the grave of someone dear to them may be neglected and very soon become unrecognisable. Oh let them take comfort! In spite of the simplicity of these little wooden crosses, almost all alike, nowhere are they cared for and honoured so well as at the front; in no other place could they receive such touching homage, such tribute of flowers, of prayers, of tears.
Paris, which is above all other towns famous for its noble impulses, was fêting some days ago our Naval Brigade from the Yser—or rather the last survivors of the heroic Brigade, the few who had been able to return. It was well done thus to make much of them, but alas! how soon it will all be forgotten.
To-day, in honour of the Brigade, of which three-quarters were annihilated, our well-beloved and eminent Minister of Marine, Admiral Lacaze, has given instructions that the glorious Order of the Day, in which the commander-in-chief bade them farewell, should be posted up on all our ships of war. It ends with these words:
"The valiant conduct of the Naval Brigade on the plains of the Yser, at Nieuport, and at Dixmude will always be to the Forces an example of warlike zeal and devotion to their country. The Naval Brigade and their officers may well be proud of this new and glorious page which they have inscribed on their records."
Indeed this Order posted up on board the ships will be more permanent than the welcome that Paris gave them; but alas! this likewise will be forgotten, too soon forgotten.
As it was decided when this Brigade of picked men were disbanded to preserve their flag for the Army so that their memory might be perpetuated, could not the Cross of Honour be attached to a flag of such distinction? This idea, it seems, has been entertained, but perhaps—I know nothing of the matter—there is some impeding clause in the regulations, for I seem to remember to have read there thatbefore it can be decorated with the Cross a flag must have been unfurled on the occasion of a great offensive or a splendid feat of arms. Now the case of our Naval Brigade is so unprecedented that no regulations could have made provision for it. How could they have unfurled their flag in that unparalleled conflict since in those days they still had none? This Brigade, hastily organised on the spur of the moment, was thrown into the firing-line without that incomparable symbol, the tricolour, which all the other brigades possessed before they set out. It was not until later, long after the great exploits with which they won their spurs, that their flag was presented to them, at a time when they had a somewhat less terrible part to play. In such circumstances I venture to hope that the regulation may be relaxed in their favour. If this flag of theirs were decorated, all the sailors who received it with such joy over there, that day when all itsthree colours were still new and brilliant, would feel themselves distinguished at the same time as the flag itself, and later, in future days, when their descendants came to look at it, poor, sacred, tattered remnant, tarnished and dusty, this Cross, which had been awarded, would speak to them more eloquently of sublime deeds done on the Belgian Front.
They can never be too highly honoured, the Naval Brigade, of whom it has been officially recorded:
"No troops in any age have ever done what these have done."
And here is an extract from a letter which, on the day when they were disbanded, after reviewing them for the last time, General Hély d'Oissel wrote to the captain of thePaillet, who was then commanding the Brigade, a letter which was read to all the sailors, drawn up in line, and which brought tears to their honest eyes:
"I should be happy to preserve the Brigade State (the terrible roll of dead, officers, non-commissioned officers, and men) as an eloquent witness of the immense services rendered to the country by this admirable Brigade, which the land forces are proud to have had in their ranks, and which I, personally, am proud to have had under my command during more than a year of the war.
"This morning when I saw your magnificent sailors filing past with such cheerfulness and precision, I could not but feel a poignant emotion when I reflected that it was for the last time."
Indeed it was just there, in the blood-drenched marshes of the Yser, that for the second time, and finally, the onrush of the barbarians was broken. The two great decisive reverses suffered by that wretched Emperor of the blood-stained hands were, everyone knows, the retreat from theMarne and then that check in Belgium, in the face of a very small handful of sailors of superhuman tenacity.
They were not specially selected, these men sublimely stubborn; no, they were the first to hand, chosen hastily from among the men in our ports. They had not even gone away to fight, but quietly to police the streets of Paris, and from Paris, one fine day, in the extremity of our peril, they were dispatched to the Yser, without preparation, inadequately equipped, with barely sufficient food, and told simply:
"Let yourselves be killed, but do not suffer the German beast to pass! At all costs resist for at least a week, to give us time to come to the rescue."
Now they held out, it will be remembered, indefinitely, in the midst of a veritable inferno of fire, shrapnel, clamour, crumbling ruins, cold, rain, engulfing mud, and ever since that day when they brought to a standstill the onrush of the beast,France felt that she was saved indeed.
Indeed, as a general rule, it is sufficient to take any honest fellows whatsoever, and merely by putting a blue collar on them, you transform them into heroes. In the Chinese expedition, among other instances, I have seen at close quarters the very same thing: a small handful of men, taken haphazard from one of our ships, commanded by very young officers who had only just attained their first band of gold braid, and this assembly of men, hastily mustered, suddenly became a force complete in itself, admirable, united, disciplined, zealous, fearless, capable of performing within a couple of days prodigies of endurance and daring.
Oh that Brigade of the Yser, whose destiny I just missed sharing! I had plotted desperately, I admit, for the sake of being attached to it, and I was about to gain my end when an obstacle arose which I could never have foreseen andwhich excluded me inexorably. To have to renounce this dream when it was almost within my grasp will be for me unto my life's end a subject of burning and tormenting regret. But at least let me comfort myself a little by paying my tribute of admiration to those who were there. Let me at least have this little pleasure of working to glorify their memory. Therefore I herewith beg on their behalf—not only in my own name, for several of my comrades in the Navy associate themselves in my prayer, comrades who were likewise not among them, the disinterested nature of whose motives cannot consequently be questioned—I beg herewith on their behalf almost confidently, although the regulation may prove me in the wrong, that it may be accorded to them, the distinction they have earned ten times over, at which no one can take umbrage, and that a scrap of red ribbon be fastened to their flag.
December, 1915.
That day, during a lull in the fighting, the General gave me permission to take a motor car for three or four hours to go and look for the grave of one of my nephews, who was struck down by a shell during our offensive in September.
From imperfect information I gathered that he must be lying in a humble emergency cemetery, improvised the day after a battle, some five or six hundred yards away from the little town of T—— whose ruins, still bombarded daily and becoming more and more shapeless, lie on the extreme border of the French zone, quite close to the German trenches. But I did not know how he had been buried, whether in a common grave, or beneath a littlecross inscribed with his name, which would make it possible to return later and remove the body.
"To get to T——," the General had said, "make adétourby the village of B——, that is the way by which you will run the least risk of being shelled. At B——, if the circumstances of the day seemed dangerous, a sentinel would stop you as usual; then you would hide your motor behind a wall, and you could continue your journey on foot—with the usual precautions, you will understand."
Osman, my faithful servant, who has shared my adventures in many lands for twenty years, and who, like everyone else, is a soldier, a territorial, had a cousin killed in the same fight as my nephew, and he is buried, so he was told, in the same cemetery. So he has obtained permission to accompany me on my pious quest.
To-day all that gloomy countryside ispowdered with hoar-frost and over it hangs an icy mist; nothing can be distinguished sixty yards ahead, and the trees which border the roads fade away, enveloped in great white shrouds.
After driving for half an hour we are right in the thick of that inferno of the battle front, which, from habit, we no longer notice, though it was at first so impressive and will later on be so strange to remember. All is chaos, hurly-burly; all is overthrown, shattered; walls are calcined, houses eviscerated, villages in ruins on the ground; but life, intense and magnificent, informs both roads and ruins. There are no longer any civilians, no women or children; nothing but soldiers, horses, and motor cars; of these, however, there are such numbers that progress is difficult. Two streams of traffic, almost uninterrupted, divide the roads between them; on one side is everything that is onits way to the firing-line; on the other side everything that is on its way back. Great lorries bringing up artillery, munitions, rations, and Red Cross supplies jolt along on the frozen cart ruts with a great din of clanging iron, rivalling the noise, more or less distant, of the incessant cannonade. And the faces of all these different men, who are driving along on these enormous rolling machines, express health and resolution. There are our own soldiers, now wearing those bluish helmets of steel, which recall the ancient casque and bring us back to the old times; there are yellow-bearded Russians, Indians, and Bedouins with swarthy complexions. All these crowds are continuously travelling to and fro along the road, dragging all sorts of curious things heaped up in piles. There are also thousands of horses, picking their way among the huge wheels of innumerable vehicles. Indeed it might be thoughtthat this was a general migration of mankind after some cataclysm had subverted the surface of the earth. Not so! This is simply the work of the great Accursed, who has unloosed German barbarism. He took forty years to prepare the monstrouscoup, which, according to his reckoning, was to establish the apotheosis of his insane pride, but which will result in nothing but his downfall, in a sea of blood, in the midst of the detestation of the world.
There is certainly a remarkable lull here to-day, for even when the rolling of the iron lorries ceases for a moment, the rumbling of the cannon does not make itself heard. The cause of this must be the fog and in other respects, too, how greatly it is to our advantage, this kindly mist; it seems as if we had ordered it.
Here we are at the village of B——, which, the General had expected, would be the terminus of our journey by car.Here the throng is chiefly concentrated among shattered walls and burnt roofs; helmets and overcoats of "horizon" blue are crowding and bustling about. And every place is blocked with these heavy wagons, which, as soon as they arrive, come to a halt, or take up a convenient position for starting on the return journey. For here we have reached the border of that region where, as a rule, men can only venture by night, on foot, with muffled tread; or if by day, one by one, so that they may not be observed by German field-glasses. At the end of the village, then, signs of life cease abruptly, as if cut off clean with the stroke of an axe. Suddenly there are no more people. The road, it is true, leads to that town of T——, which is our destination; but all at once it is quite empty and silent. Bordered by its two rows of skeleton trees, white with frost, it plunges into the dense white fogwith an air of mystery, and it would not be surprising to read here, on some signpost, "Road to Death."
We hesitate for a moment. I do not, however, see any of the signals which are customary at places where a halt must be made, nor the usual little red flag, nor the warning sentry, holding his rifle above his head with both hands. So the road is considered practicable to-day, and when I ask if indeed it leads to T——, some sergeants who are there salute and confine their answer to the word "Yes, sir," without showing any surprise. So all that we have to do is to continue, taking, nevertheless, the precaution of not driving too fast, so as not to make too much noise.
And it is merely by this stillness into which we are now plunging, by this solitude alone, that I am aware that we are right in the very front; for it is one of the strange characteristics of modern warfarethat the tragic zone bordering on the burrows of the barbarians, is like a desert. Not a soul is visible; everything here is hidden, buried, and—except on days when Death begins to roar with loud and terrible voice—most frequently there is nothing to be heard.
We go on and on in a scenery of dismal monotony, continually repeating itself, all misty and unsubstantial in appearance as if made of muslin. Fifty yards behind us it is effaced and shut away; fifty yards ahead of us it opens out, keeping its distance from us, but without varying its aspect. The whitish plain with its frozen cart ruts remains ever the same; it is blurred and does not reveal its distances; there is ever the same dense atmosphere, resembling cold white cotton wool, which has taken the place of air, and ever the two rows of trees powdered with rime, looking like big brooms which have beenrolled in salt and thrust into the ground by their handles. It is clear indeed that this region is too often ravaged by lightning, or something equivalent. Oh, how many trees there are shattered, twisted, with splintered branches hanging in shreds!
We cross French trenches running to the right and left of the road, facing the unknown regions towards which we are hastening; they are ready, several lines of them, to meet the improbable contingency of a retreat of our troops; but they are empty and are merely a continuation of the same desert. I call a halt from time to time to look around and listen with ears pricked. There is no sound; everything is as still as if Nature herself had died of all this cold. The fog is growing thicker still, and there are no field-glasses capable of penetrating it. At the very most they might hear us arrive, the enemy, over thereand beyond. According to my maps we have still another two miles at least before us. Onwards!
But suddenly there appears to have been an evocation of ghosts; heads, rows of heads, wearing blue helmets, rise together from the ground, right and left, near and far. Upon my soul! they are our own soldiers to be sure, and they content themselves with looking at us, scarcely showing themselves. But for these trenches, which we are passing so rapidly, to be so full of soldiers on the alert, we must be remarkably close to the Ogre's den. Nevertheless let us go a little farther, as the kindly mist stays with us like an accomplice.
Five hundred yards farther on I remember the enemy's microphones, which alone could betray us; and it so happens that the frozen earth and the mist are two wonderful conductors of sound. Then itsuddenly occurs to me that I have gone much too far, that I am surrounded by death, that it is only the fog which shelters us, and the thought that I am responsible for the lives of my soldiers makes me shudder. It is because I am not on duty; my expedition to-day is of my own choosing, and in these conditions, if anything happened to one of them, I should suffer remorse for the rest of my life. It is high time to leave the car here! Then I shall continue my journey on foot towards the town of T——, to find out from our soldiers who are installed there in cellars of ruined houses, whereabouts the cemetery lies which I am seeking.
But at this same moment a densely crowded cemetery is visible in a field to the left of the road; there are crosses, crosses of white wood, ranged close together in rows, as numerous as vines in the vineyards of Champagne. It is ahumble cemetery for soldiers, quite new, yet already extensive, powdered with rime too, like the surrounding plains, and infinitely desolate of aspect in that colourless countryside, which has not even a green blade of grass. Can this be the cemetery we are seeking?
"Yes, certainly this is it," exclaims Osman, "this is it, for here is my poor cousin's grave. Look, sir, the first, close to the ditch which borders the cemetery. I read his name here."
Indeed, I read it myself, "Pierre D——." The inscription is in very large letters, and the cross is facing in our direction more than the others, as if it would call to us:
"Halt! we are here. Do not run the risk of going any farther. Stop!"
And we stop, listening attentively in the silence. There is no sound, no movement anywhere, except the fall of a beadof frost, slipping off the gaunt trees by the wayside. We seem to be in absolute security. Let us then calmly enter the field where this humble cross seems to have beckoned to us.
Osman had carefully prepared two little sealed bottles, containing the names of our two dead friends, which he intended to bury at their feet, fearing lest shells should still be capable of destroying all the labels on the graves. It is true we have carelessly forgotten to bring a spade to dig up the earth, but it cannot be helped, we shall do it as best we may. The two chauffeurs accompany us, for knowing the reason for our expedition, they had, with kindly thoughtfulness, each brought a camera to take a photograph of the graves. Pierre D—— had been discovered at once. There remained only my nephew to be found among these many frozen graves of youthful dead. In order to gain time—for theplace is not very reassuring, it must be confessed—let us divide the pious task among us, and each of us follow one of these rows, ranged with such military regularity.
I do not think human imagination could ever conceive anything so dismal as this huge military cemetery in the midst of all this desolation, this silence which one knows to be listening, hostile and treacherous, in this horrible neighbourhood whose menace seems, as it were, to loom over us. Everything is white or whitish, beginning with the soil of Champagne, which would always be pale even if it were not powdered with innumerable little crystals of ice. There is no shrub, no greenery, not even grass; nothing but the pale, cinder-grey earth in which our soldiers have been buried. Here they lie, these two or three hundreds of little hillocks, so narrow that it seems that space is precious, each onemarked with its poor little white cross. Garlanded with frost, the arms of all these crosses seem fringed with sad, silent tears which have frozen there, unable to fall, and the fog envelops the whole scene so jealously that the end of the cemetery cannot be clearly seen. The last crosses, hung with white drops, are lost in livid indefiniteness. It seems as if this field alone were left in the world, with all its myriad pearls gleaming sadly, and naught else.
I have bent down over a hundred graves at least and I find nothing but unknown names, often even that cruel phrase, "Not identified." I say that I have bent down, because sometimes, instead of being painted in black letters, the inscription was engraved on a little zinc plate—nothing better was to be had—engraved hastily and difficult to decipher. At last I discover the poor boy whom I was seeking, "Sergent Georges de F." There he is, in lineas if on a parade ground, between his companions, all alike silent. A little plate of zinc has fallen to his lot, and his name has been patiently stippled, doubtless with the help of a hammer and a nail. His is one of the few graves decked with a wreath, a very modest wreath to be sure, of leaves already discoloured, a token of remembrance from his men who must have loved him, for I know he was gentle with them.
For reference later, when his body will be removed, I am now going to draw a plan of the cemetery in my notebook, counting the rows of graves and the number of graves in each row. Look! bullets are whistling past us, two or three in succession. Whence can they be coming to us, these bullets? They are undoubtedly intended for us, for the noise that each one makes ends in that kind of little honeyed song, "Cooee you! Cooee you!" which is characteristic of them when they expiresomewhere in your direction, somewhere quite close. After their flight silence prevails again, but I make more haste with my drawing.
And the longer I remain here the more I am impressed with the horror of the place. Oh this cemetery which, instead of ending like things in real life, plunges little by little into enfolding mists; these tombs, these tombs all decked with gem-like icicles which have dropped as tears drop; the whiteness of the soil, the whiteness of everything, and Death which returns and hovers stealthily, uttering a little cry like a bird! Yonder, by the grave of Pierre D——, I notice Osman, likewise much blurred in the fog. He has found a spade, which has doubtless remained there ever since the interments, and he finishes burying the little bottle which is to serve as a token.
Again that sound, "Cooee you! Cooeeyou!" The place is decidedly unhealthy, as the soldiers say. I should be to blame if I lingered here any longer.
Upon my soul, here comes shrapnel! But before I heard it explode in the air I recognised it by the sound of its flight, which is different from that of ordinary shells. This first shot is aimed too far to the right, and the fragments fall twenty or thirty yards away on the little white hillocks. But they have found us out, so much is certain, and that is owing to the microphones. This will continue, and there is no cover anywhere, not a single trench, not a single hole.
"Stoop down, sir, stoop down," shouts Osman from the distance, seeing another coming towards me while my attention is still occupied with the graves. Why should I stoop down? It is a useful precaution against shells. But against shrapnel, which strikes downwards from above?No, we ought to have our steel helmets, but carelessly, anticipating no danger, we left them in the car with our masks. All that is left for us is to beat a hasty retreat. Osman comes running towards me with his spade and his second little bottle, and I shout at him:
"No, no, it is too late, you must run away."
Good heavens, the car has not even been turned! Why, that was an elementary precaution, and as soon as we arrived I ought to have seen to that. What a long, black record of carelessness to-day; where is my head? It is because our entry to the cemetery was so undisturbed. I call out to the two chauffeurs who were still taking photographs:
"Stop that, stop! Go at once and turn the car! Not too fast though, or you will make too much noise, but hurry up! Run!"
Osman took advantage of this diversion with the chauffeurs to begin digging in the ground near me.
"No, I tell you, stop at once. Can you not see that they are still shelling us? Run and get behind a tree by the roadside."
"But it is all right, sir, it is just finished. It will be finished by the time the car has been turned."
In my heart I am glad that he is disobeying me a little and completing the work. Never was a hole dug so rapidly nor a bottle buried so nimbly. Then he puts back the earth, jumps on it to flatten it down, and throws down his sexton's spade. Then we run away at full speed, stepping on the hillocks of our dead, apologising to them inwardly. Nothing seems so ridiculous and stupid as to run under fire. But I am not alone; the safety of these soldiers is in my charge, and I should be guilty if I delayed them for as much as a second in their flight.
Shrapnel is still bursting, scattering its hail around us. And how strange and subtle are the ways of modern warfare, where death comes thus seeking us out of invisible depths, depths of a horizon that looks like white cotton wool; death launched at us by men whom we can see no more than they can see us, launched blindly, yet in the certainty of finding us.
We reach the car just as it has finished turning; we jump in, and off our car goes at full speed, all open. We pass the occupied trenches like a hurricane; this time heads are scarcely raised because of the shower of shrapnel. These men, to be sure, are under cover, but not so we, who have nothing but our speed to save us.
In our frantic flight, in which my part is simply passive, my imagination is free to return to that gloomy cemetery and its dead. And it was strange how clearly we could hear the shrapnel in the midst of thissilence and in this extraordinary mist, which increased, like a microphone, the noise of its flight. It is, moreover, perhaps the first time that I have heard it performing a solo apart from all the customary clamour, in intimacy, if I may say so, for it has done me the honour of coming solely on my account. Never before, then, had I felt that almost physical appreciation of the mad velocity of these little hard bodies, and of the shock with which they must strike against some fragile object, say a chest or a head.
The game is over, and we are entering again the village of B——. Here, out of range of shrapnel, only long-distance guns could reach us. We have not even a broken pane of glass or a scratch. Instinctively the chauffeurs draw up, just as I was about to give the order, not because the car is out of breath, or we either, but we need a moment to regain our composure, toarrange the overcoats thrown into the car in a confused heap, which, after our hurried departure, danced a saraband with cameras, helmets, and revolvers.
And then, like people who at last succeed in finding a shelter from a shower in a gateway, we look at one another and feel inclined to laugh—to laugh in spite of the painful and still recent memory of our dead, to laugh at having made good our escape, to laugh because we have succeeded in doing what we set out to do, and especially because we have defied those imbeciles who were firing at us.
March 10th, 1916.
It is just here, I believe, that that zone, some fifteen to twenty miles in breadth, so terribly torn and rent, which stretches through our land of France from the North Sea to Alsace, following the line of those trenches, where the barbarians have dug themselves in, it is just here, I believe, that that zone, where suffering and glory reign supreme, attains the climax of its nightmare-like illusiveness, the climax of its horror. I say "just here" because I am not allowed to be more definite; just here, however, in a certain province which had even before the war a depressing-nickname, something like "the desolate province," "the mean province," or even, if you like, "the lousy province." Thereason was that even before it was laid waste it was already very barren, almost without verdure; it had nothing to show except unfruitful valleys, some clumps of stunted pines, some poverty-stricken villages, which had not even the saving grace of antiquity, for century by century savages from Germany had come and disported themselves there, and when they went away everything had to be rebuilt.
And now since the great new onrush, which surpassed all abominations ever before experienced, how strange, fantastic almost, seems this region of woe, with its calcined ruins, its chalky soil dug over and again dug over down to its very depths, as if by myriads of burrowing animals.
Once again I make my way to-day in my motor car into the midst of it all on some mission assigned to me, and I had never yet seen it in all the mire of the thaw, in which our poor little warriors in blue capsare so uncomfortably engulfed up to mid-leg. I feel my heart sinking more and more the farther I go along these broken-up roads, which are becoming still more crowded with our dear soldiers, all lamentably coated with greyish mud. The occasional villages on our road are more and more damaged by shells, and peasant women or children are no longer to be seen; there are no more civilians, nothing but blue helmets, but of these there are thousands. The rapid melting of the snow in such a sudden burst of sunshine marks the distant landscape with zebra-like stripes, white and earth-coloured. And all the hills which we pass now seem to be inhabited by tribes of troglodytes, while every slope which faces us, who are coming in this direction, and which, owing to its position, has thus escaped the notice and the fire of the enemy, is riddled with mouths of caves, some ranged in rows,some built in stories one above the other, and from these peer out human heads in helmets, enjoying the sun. What can this country be? Is it prehistoric, or merely very remote? Surely no one would say that it was France. Save for this bitter, icy wind, this country, with its sky almost too blue to-day for a northern sky, might be taken for the banks of the upper Nile, the Libyan ridge where subterranean caverns gape.
Again a semblance of a village appears, the last through which I shall pass, for those which are distant landmarks on the road that leads towards the barbarians, are nothing more now than hapless heaps of stone resembling barrows. This village, too, be it understood, is three-quarters in ruins; there remain fragments of walls in grotesque shapes, letting in the daylight and displaying a black marbling of soot where the chimneys used to be. But manysoldiers are gaily having their breakfast in the purely imaginary shelter afforded them by these remains of houses. There are pay-sergeants even, who are seated unconcernedly at improvised tables, busy with their writing.
Bang! A shell! It is a shell hurled blindly and from a great distance by the barbarians, without definite purpose, merely in the hope that it may succeed in hurting someone. It has fallen on the ruins of a roofless stable, where some poor horses are tethered, and here are two of them who have been struck down and are lying bellies upwards and kicking out, as they do when they are dying; they stain the snow crimson with blood spurting from their chests in jets, as if forced from a pump.
The village soon disappears in the distance, and I enter this no man's land, always rather a solemn region, whichfrom end to end along the front indicates the immediate neighbourhood of the barbarians. The March sun, astonishingly strong, beats down upon this tragic desert where great sheets of white snow alternate with broad, mud-coloured surfaces. And now whenever my car stops and pauses, for some reason or other, and the engine is silent, the noise of the cannon is heard more and more loudly.
At last I reach the farthest point to which my car can convey me; if I took it on farther it would be seen by the Boches, and the shells that are roaming about here and there in the air would converge upon it. It must be safely bestowed, together with my chauffeurs, in a hollow of the undulating ground, while I continue my journey alone on foot.
First of all I have to telephone to General Headquarters. The telephone office is that dark hole over there, hidden amongscanty bushes. Climbing down a very narrow flight of steps, I penetrate seven or eight yards into the earth, and there I find four soldiers installed as telephone girls, illumined by tiny electric lamps that shine like glow-worms. These are territorials, about forty years of age, and the man who hands me the telephone apparatus wears a wedding ring—doubtless he has a wife and children living somewhere yonder out in the open air, where life is possible. Nevertheless he tells me that he has been six months in this damp hole, beneath the surface of ground which is continually swept by shells, and he tells me this with cheerful resignation, as if the sacrifice were quite a natural thing. In the same spirit his companions speak of their white-ant existence without a shade of complaint. And these, too, are worthy of admiration, all these patient heroes of the darkness, equally so, perhaps, withtheir comrades who fight in the open air in the light of day, with mutual encouragement.
Emerging from the underground cave, where the noises are muffled, I hear very clearly the cannonade; my eyes are dazzled by the unwonted sunlight which illumines all those white stretches of snow.
I have to journey about two miles through this strange desert to reach a paltry little clump of sorry-looking pines which I perceive over there on some rising ground. It is there that I have made an appointment to meet an officer of sappers, whom my business concerns, for the purpose of fulfilling my mission.
A pretence of a desert, I ought rather to call it, for underground it is thickly populated by our soldiers, armed and alert. At the first signal of an attack they would rush out through a thousand apertures; but for the moment, throughout the wholeextent of this tract, so sun-steeped and yet so cold, not more than one or two blue caps are visible, belonging to men who are stealing along from one shelter to another.
And it is, moreover, a terribly noisy desert, for besides the continual detonation of artillery from varying ranges, there is a noise like huge kinds of beetles flying, which, as they pass, make almost the same buzzing sound as aeroplanes, but they all fly so fast as to be invisible. Their flight is haphazard, and when they strike their heads hard against the ground pebbles, earth, scrap-iron, spout up in jets shaped like wheat-sheaves. On the eastern horizon, silhouetted against the sky, stands one of those tumuli of ruins which now mark the place of former villages; and it is here especially that those huge beetles are bent on falling, raising each time clouds of plaster and dust. It is, to be sure, a uselessand idle bombardment, for already all this has perished.
To-day especially, being a day of a great thaw, a distance of two miles here in this region where so many of our poor soldiers are doomed to exist, is equal to a distance of at least ten miles elsewhere—it is such heavy going. You sink up to your ankles in mud, and you cannot draw your foot out, for the mud sticks tight like glue. The wind still remains cold and icy, but in the midst of a sky too deeply blue shines a sun, beating down upon my head, and under the steel helmet, which grows heavier and heavier, beads of sweat stand upon my forehead. The snow has made up its mind to melt, and that suddenly. All the summits of those melancholy-looking hills, bared of their covering, resume again their brown colour and resemble hindquarters of animals couching on these plains which still remain white.
This is the first time that I find myself absolutely, infinitely alone, in the midst of this scene of intense desolation, which, though to-day it happens to glitter with light, is none the less dismal. Until I reach the little wood whither I am bound on duty there is nothing to think about, nothing with which I need concern myself. I need not trouble to get out of the way of shells, for they would not give me time, nor even to select places where to put my feet, since I sink in equally wherever I step. And so, gradually, I find myself relapsing into a state of mind characteristic of former days before the war, and I look at all these things to which I had grown accustomed and view them impartially, as if they were new. Twenty short months ago, who would have imagined such scenes? For instance, these countless spoil-heaps, white in colour, because the soil of this province is white, spoil-heaps which are thrown upeverywhere in long lines, tracing on the desert so many zebra-like stripes; is it possible that these indicate the only tracks by which to-day our soldiers of France can move about with some measure of safety? They are little hollow tracks, some undulating, some straight, communication trenches which the French nickname "intestines." These have been multiplied again and again, until the ground is furrowed with them unendingly. What prodigious work, moreover, they represent, these mole-like paths, spreading like a network over hundreds of leagues. If to their sum be added trenches, shelter caves, and all those catacombs that penetrate right into the heart of the hills, the mind is amazed at excavations so extensive, which would seem the work of centuries.
And these strange kinds of nets, stretched out in all directions, would anyone, unless previously warned and accustomedto them, understand what they were? They look as if gigantic spiders had woven their webs around countless numbers of posts, which stretch out beyond range of sight, some in straight lines, some in circles or crescents, tracing on that wide tract of country designs in which there must surely be some cabalistic significance intended to envelop and entangle the barbarians more effectively. Since I last came this way these obstructing nets must have been reinforced to a terrible extent, and their number has been multiplied by two, by ten. In order to achieve such inextricable confusion our soldiers, those weavers of snares, must have made in them turnings and twists with their great bobbins of barbed wire carried under their arms. But here, at various points, are enclosures, whose purpose is obvious at a glance and which add to the grisly horror of the whole scene; these fences of woodsurround closely packed groups of humble little wooden crosses made of two sticks. Alas! what they are is clear at first sight. Thus, then, they lie, within sound of the cannonade, as if the battle were not yet over for them, these dear comrades of ours who have vanished, heroes humble yet sublime—inapproachable for the present, even for those who weep for them, inapproachable, because death never ceases to fly through the air which stirs overhead, above their little silent gatherings.
Ah! to complete the impression of unreality a black bird appears of fabulous size, a monster of the Apocalypse, flying with great clamour aloft in the air. He is moving in the direction of France, seeking, no doubt, some more sheltered region, where at last women and children are to be found, in the hope of destroying some of them. I keep on walking, if walkingit can be called, this wearisome, pitiless repetition of plunges into snow and ice-cold mud. At last I reach the clump of trees where we have arranged to meet. I am thankful to have arrived there, for my helmet and cap were encumbrances under that unexpectedly hot sun. I am, however, before my time. The officer whom I invited to meet me here—in order to discuss questions concerning new works of defence, new networks of lines, new pits—that is he, no doubt, that blue silhouette coming this way across the snow-shrouded ground. But he is far away, and for a few more moments I can still indulge in the reverie with which I whiled away the journey, before the time comes when I must once more become precise and businesslike. Evidently the place is not one of perfect peace, for it is clear that these melancholy boughs, half stripped of leaves already, have suffered from those greathumming cockchafers that fly across from time to time, and have been shot through as if they were no stronger than sheets of paper. It is, to be sure, but a small wood, yet it keeps me company, wrapping me round with an illusion of safety.
I am standing here on rising ground, where the wind blows more icily, and I command a view of the whole terrible landscape, a succession of monotonous hills, striped in zebra fashion with whitish trenches; its few trees have been blasted by shrapnel. In the distance that network of iron wire, stretching out in all directions, shines brightly in the sun, and is not unlike the gossamer which floats over the meadows in spring time. And on all sides the detonation of artillery continues with its customary clamour, unceasing here, day and night, like the sea beating against the cliffs.
Ah! the big black bird has found someoneto talk to in the air. I see it suddenly assailed by a quantity of those flakes of white cotton wool (bursts of shrapnel), in appearance so innocent, yet so dangerous to birds of his feather. So he hurriedly turns back, and his crimes are postponed to another day.
From behind a neighbouring hill issues a squad of men in blue, who will reach me before the officer on the road yonder. It is one, just one, of a thousand of those little processions which, alas! may be met with every hour all along the front, forming, as it were, part of the scenery. In front march four soldiers carrying a stretcher, and others follow them to relieve them. They, too, are attracted by the delusive hope of protection afforded by the branches, and at the beginning of the wood they stop instinctively for a breathing space and to change shoulders. They have come from first line trenches amile or two away and are carrying a seriously wounded man to a subterranean field hospital, not more than a quarter of an hour's walk away. They, likewise, had not anticipated the heat of that terrible March sun, which is beating down on their heads; they are wearing their helmets and winter caps, and these weigh upon them as heavily as the precious burden which they are so careful not to jolt. In addition to this they drag along on each leg a thick crust of snow and sticky mud, which makes their feet as heavy as elephants' feet, and the sweat pours in great drops down their faces, cheerful in spite of fatigue.
"Where is your man wounded?" I ask, in a low voice.
In a voice still lower comes the reply: "His stomach is ripped open, and the Major in the trench said that——" they finish the sentence merely by shaking theirheads, but I have understood. Besides he has not stirred. His poor hand remains lying across his eyes and forehead, doubtless to protect them from the burning sun, and I ask them:
"Why have you not covered his face?"
"We put a handkerchief over it, sir, but he took it off. He said he preferred to remain like this,so that he could still look at things between his fingers."
Ah! the last two men have blood as well as sweat pouring over their faces and trickling in a little stream down their necks.
"It is nothing much, sir," they say, "we got that as soon as we started. We began by carrying him along the communication trenches, but that jolted him too much, so then we walked along outside in the open."
Poor fellows, admirable for their very carelessness. To save their wounded man from jolts they risked their own lives.Two or three of these death-bringing cockchafers, which go humming along here at all hours, came down and were crushed to pieces on the stones close to them, and wounded them with their shattered fragments. The Germans disdain to fire at a single wayfarer like myself, but a group of men, and a stretcher in particular, they cannot resist. One of these men, both of whom are dripping with blood, has perhaps actually received only a scratch, but the other has lost an ear; only a shred is left, hanging by a thread.
"You must go at once and have your wound dressed at the hospital, my friend," I say to him.
"Yes, sir. And we are just on our way there, to the hospital. It is very lucky."
This is the only idea of complaint that has entered his head.
"It is very lucky."
And he says this with such a quiet, pleasantsmile, grateful to me for taking an interest in him.
I hesitated before going to look more closely at their seriously wounded man who never stirred, for I feared lest I should disturb his last dream. Nevertheless I approach him very gently, because they are just going to carry him away.
Alas! he is almost a child, a child from some village; so much is clear from his bronzed cheeks, which have scarcely yet begun to turn pale. The sun, even as he desired, shines full upon his comely face, the face of a boy of twenty, with a frank and energetic expression, and his hand still shades his eyes, which have a fixed look and seem to have done with sight. Some morphia had to be given him to spare him at least unnecessary suffering.
Lowly child of our peasantry, little ephemeral being, of what is he dreaming, if indeed he still dreams? Perhaps of awhite-capped mother who wept tender tears whenever she recognised his childish writing on an envelope from the front. Or perhaps he is dreaming of a cottage garden, the delight of his earliest years, where, he reflects, this warm March sun will call to life new shoots all along some old wall. On his chest I see the handkerchief with which one of the men had attempted to cover his face; it is a fine handkerchief, embroidered with a marquis's coronet—the coronet of one of his stretcher bearers. He had desiredstill to look at things, in his terror, doubtless, of the black night. But soon he will suddenly cease to be aware of this same sun, which now must dazzle him. First of all he will enter the half-darkness of the field hospital, and immediately afterwards there will descend upon him that black inexorable night, in which no March sun will ever rise again.
"Go on at once, my friends," I say tothem, "the wind blows too cold here for people drenched with sweat like you."
I watch them move away, their legs weighted with slabs of viscous mud. My admiration and my compassion go with them on their way through the snow, where they plod along so laboriously.
These men, to be sure, still have some privileges, for they can at least help one another, and careful hands are waiting to dress their wounds in an underground refuge, which is almost safe. But close to this, at Verdun, there are thousands of others, who have fallen in confused heaps, smothering one another. Underneath corpses lie dying men, whom it is impossible to rescue from those vast charnel-houses, so long ago and so scientifically prepared by the Kaiser for the greater glory of that ferocious young nonentity whom he has for a son.