True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6)
by unknown · English · Gutenberg #49099 · 634,469 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6)
Editor: Francis Trevelyan Miller
Release date: May 31, 2015 [eBook #49099]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49099
Credits: Produced by Brian Coe, Moti Ben-Ari and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR, VOLUME 3 (OF 6) ***
TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR
TRUE STORIES
OF THE
GREAT WAR
TALES OF ADVENTURE--HEROIC DEEDS--EXPLOITS
TOLD BY THE SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, NURSES,
DIPLOMATS, EYE-WITNESSES
_Collected in Six Volumes
From Official and Authoritative Sources_
(_See Introductory to Volume I_)
VOLUME III
Editor-in-Chief
FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER (Litt. D., LL.D.)
Editor of The Search-Light Library
1917
REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1917, by
REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
CONTENTS
The Board of Editors has selected for VOLUME III this group of
stories told by Soldiers, Naval Officers, Nurses, Nuns, Refugees,
Airmen, Spies, and other participants and eye-witnesses of the Great
War. They have been collected from twenty-three of the most authentic
sources in Europe and America, and include 143 personal adventures
and episodes. The selections have been made according to the plan
outlined in the Introductory to Volume I, for selecting from all
sources the "Best Stories of the War." Full credit is given in every
instance to the original source. All numerals are for the purpose of
identifying the various episodes and do not relate to the chapters in
the original volumes.--EDITORS.
VOLUME III--TWENTY-TWO STORY-TELLERS--143 EPISODES
WHAT I FOUND OUT IN THE HOUSE OF A GERMAN PRINCE 1
STORIES OF INTIMATE TALKS WITH THE HOHENZOLLERNS
Told by an English-American Governess
(Permission of Frederick A. Stokes Company, of New York)
"FROM CONVENT TO CONFLICT"--A VISION OF INFERNO 18
A NUN'S ACCOUNT OF THE INVASION OF BELGIUM
Told by Sister Antonia, Convent des Filles de Marie
(Permission of John Murphy Company, of Baltimore)
"WAR LETTERS OF AN AMERICAN WOMAN"--IN BLEEDING FRANCE 30
EXPERIENCES IN THE SIEGE OF PARIS
Told by Marie Van Vorst, American Novelist
(Permission of John Lane Company, London and New York)
"A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE"--HIS ESCAPE 48
"THE INSIDE STORY OF THE GERMAN ARMY"
Told by--(Name Withheld)
(Permission of B. W. Huebsch, of New York)
"THE SOUL OF THE WAR"--TALES OF THE HEROIC FRENCH 70
REVELATIONS OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT
Told by Philip Gibbs
(Permission of Robert M. McBride and Company, New York)
"TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI"--IN THE LAND OF THE TURKS 91
ADVENTURES OF A NEWFOUNDLANDER
Told by John Gallishaw
(Permission of the Century Company, of New York)
SCENES "IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL" 106
STORIES OF A NURSE
Told by M. Eydoux-Demians
(Permission of Duffield and Company, of New York)
"FLYING FOR FRANCE"--HERO TALES OF BATTLES IN THE AIR 126
WITH THE AMERICAN ESCADRILLE AT VERDUN
Told by James R. McConnell
(Permission of Doubleday, Page and Company, of New York)
THE LOG OF THE "MOEWE"--TALES OF THE HIGH SEAS 166
THE ADVENTURES OF A MODERN PIRATE
Told by Count Dohna-Schlodien, her Commander
(Permission of Wide-World Magazine)
PRISONER'S VOYAGE ON GERMAN U-BOAT UNDER THE SEA 196
Told by--(Name Withheld by Request)
(Permission of New York Times)
THE DARKEST HOUR--FLEEING FROM THE BULGARIANS 208
OUR EXPERIENCES IN THE GREAT SERBIAN RETREAT
Told by Alice and Claude Askew
(Permission of Wide World Magazine)
A MAGYAR PALADIN--A RITTMEISTER OF THE HUSSARS 222
ALONG THE ROAD FROM POLAND TO BUDAPEST
Told by Franz Molnar
(Permission of New York Tribune)
OUR ESCAPE FROM GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA 231
Told by Corporal H. J. McElnea
(Permission of Wide World Magazine)
WHAT AN AMERICAN WOMAN SAW ON THE SERBIAN FRONT 261
HOW I VIEWED A BATTLE FROM A PRECIPICE
Told by Mrs. Charles H. Farnum of New York
(Permission of New York Sun)
"KAMERADS!"--CAPTURING HUNS IN THE ALPS WITHOUT
A FIGHT 270
DIARY OF A LIEUTENANT OF ALPINE CHASSEURS
(Permission of Wide World Magazine)
LIFE ON A FRENCH CRUISER IN WAR TIME 282
"LES VAGABONDS DE LA GUERRE"
Told by René Milan
(Permission of Current History)
OVER THE TOP WITH THE AMERICANS IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 293
Told by Donald R. Thane
(Permission of New York Herald)
SECRET STORIES OF THE GERMAN SPY IN FRANCE 306
HOW SIXTY THOUSAND SPIES PREPARED FOR THE WAR
(Permission of Wide World Magazine)
HOW STRONG MEN DIE--TALES OF THE WOUNDED 329
EXPERIENCES OF A SCOTTISH MINISTER
Told by Rev. Lauchlan Maclean Watt
(Permission of The Scotsman)
THROUGH JAWS OF DEATH IN A SUNKEN SUBMARINE 336
Told by Emile Vedel in L'Illustration, Paris
(Permission of New York World)
ESCAPE OF THE RUSSIAN LEADER OF THE "TERRIBLE
DIVISION" 343
TRUE STORY OF HOW GENERAL KORNILOFF ESCAPED
ACROSS HUNGARY
Told by Ivan Novikoff
(Permission of Wide World Magazine)
THE AERIAL ATTACK ON RAVENNA 358
Told by Paoli Polettit in L'Illustrazione Italiana
(Permission of Current History)
[Illustration: Underwood & Underwood.
BRINGING IN A WOUNDED COMRADE
_Some of the Most Heroic Acts of the War Have Been Performed as Part
of the "Day's Work" of the Ambulance Corps. This French Ambulance
Attendant is Risking His Own Life During the French Offensive at Verdun
to Carry a Fellow Poilu Back Through the Woods Razed by German Gun
Fire._]
[Illustration: READING HOME NEWS BEFORE STARTING FOR THE TRENCHES]
[Illustration: HE CHARGED WITH HIS BATTALION A FEW HOURS EARLIER]
[Illustration: A FRIEND'S TURN YESTERDAY--HIS PERHAPS TODAY]
WHAT I FOUND OUT IN THE HOUSE OF A GERMAN PRINCE
_Stories of Intimate Talks with the Hohenzollerns_
_Told by an English-American Governess_
These true stories reveal for the first time the "inside workings"
of the German Court. They are told by a woman who overheard
conversations between the members of the House of Hohenzollern and
the military and diplomatic castes. She was governess in a German
princely house at the outbreak of the war, having secured her
position through Prince Henry of Prussia, whom she met in Washington,
during his visit to the United States. Her grandfather was an admiral
in the United States Navy. She tells frankly of her conversations
with the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, General von Bernhardi, the Krupps,
Count Zeppelin, General von Kluck, Herr Dernburg, and important
secret service people, who took her into their confidences. These
revelations (which have been published by _Frederick A. Stokes Co._,
of New York) are most absorbing reading. Here we are necessarily
limited to a selection of but six anecdotes from the hundreds of
entrancing stories in her book. The book is a valuable record of
her experiences as governess of two young princes at their game,
"destroying London before supper," to her final escape in disguise
after the war began.
By a coincidence, it was five years ago, on the day of my internment in
a German castle last August (1914), that I undertook to teach English
and other things to the children of that castle's owner. During four of
those years I did my duty to my three little charges as well as I knew
how. For the rest of the time, up to two days before the declaration of
war between France and Germany, my conduct may have been questionable:
but that was because I put duty to my country ahead of duty to the
family of a German prince. They were my employers; they trusted me,
and I am not sure whether I decided rightly or wrongly. All I know
is that I would do the same if I had to live through the experience
again....
As for the most important men who visited them, it is different. I
owe those persons nothing, and see no reason for disguising their
names. Most of them have now, of their own accord, thrown off their
peace-masks, and revealed themselves as enemies of England, if not of
humanity, outside German "kultur." What I have to tell will but show
how long they have held their present sentiments....
[1]I--A CONVERSATION WITH THE KAISER
My two Princes and their cousin were having an English lesson with me
in a summer-house close to their earthworks. It had been raining.
I was reading aloud a boys' book by George Henty which I had brought
among others from England for that purpose, and stopping at exciting
parts to get the children to criticize it in English. We were having
an animated discussion, and all three were clamoring for me to "go
on--go on!" when I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel path which
led to the summer-house. I did not look up, because I thought it might
be Lieutenant von X---- who was coming, and my charges were too much
excited to pay attention. But presently I realized that the crunching
had ceased, close to us. My back was half turned to the doorway, and
before beginning to read again, I looked round rather impatiently.
Two gentlemen in uniform were standing in the path, one a step or
two in advance of the other. Nobody who had seen any of the later
photographs could have failed to recognize the foremost officer as the
Kaiser, though the portraits were idealized. The face of the original
was older, the nose heavier, and the figure shorter, stockier than I
had expected. Nor had I been told about the scar high up on the left
cheek. I was so taken by surprise that I lost my presence of mind.
Jumping up, I dropped my book, and knocked over the light wicker chair
which was supposed to be of British manufacture. I was so ashamed of
my awkwardness--such a bad example to the children!--that I could
have cried. To make matters worse the Emperor burst out laughing, a
good-natured laugh, but embarrassing to me, as I was the object of his
merriment.
"I have upset the United Kingdom and the United States of America!"
his Imperial Majesty haw-hawed in good English, though in rather a
harsh voice, making a gesture of the right hand toward the chair of
alleged British make, and the fallen book with George Henty's name
on its back, at the same time giving me one of the most direct looks
I have ever had, full in the face. It seemed to challenge me, and I
remembered having heard that a short cut to the Kaiser's favor was a
smart repartee. The worst of it was that like a flash I thought of one
which would be pat, if impertinent, but I dared not risk it.
Luckily my two Princes rushed past me to throw themselves upon their
sovereign, and their cousin followed suit, more timidly. Perhaps she
had discovered that his Imperial Majesty does not much care for little
girls unless they are pretty.
The Kaiser was kind but short in his greeting of the children, and
did not seem to notice that they expected to be kissed. Probably he
was not satisfied as to their state of health, as they had been sent
out of an infected town, and he has never conquered his horror of
contagious diseases. With his right hand (he seldom uses the left)
on the dark head of the elder boy, he pivoted him round with rough
playfulness. "Don't you see that Miss ----'s chair and book are on the
floor?" inquired the "All Highest." "What is a gentleman's duty--I mean
pleasure--when a lady drops anything?"
"To pick it up," replied the child, his face red as he hurried back
into the summer-house and suited the action to the word.
"Very good, though late," said the Kaiser. Then, no doubt thinking
that I had had time to recover myself, he turned to me, more
quizzical than ever. "Perhaps according to present ideas in England
I am old-fashioned? But I hope you are not English enough to be a
suffragette, Miss ----?"
I recognized the great compliment of his knowing my name, as I am sure
he expected. I had heard already that suffragettes were to the Emperor
as red rags to a bull, and that he always brought up the subject with
Englishwomen when he met them for the first time. I ventured to remark
that to be English was not necessarily to be a suffragette.
He shook his finger at me like a schoolmaster, though he smiled.
"Ah, but you are not an Englishwoman, or you would not say that! All
these modern Englishwomen are suffragettes. Well, we should show them
what we think of them if they sent a deputation here. But while they
confine themselves to their own soil we can bless them. They are
sowing good seed for us to reap."
I had no idea what his Majesty meant by the last sentences, though
I could see that an innuendo was intended. His certainty that he
was right about all modern Englishwomen was only what I had seen in
visitors to Schloss ----, every one of whom, especially the Prussians,
knew far more about English ideas and customs than the English knew
about themselves. I had sometimes disputed their statements, though
without effect, but I could not contradict the Emperor. All I could do
was to wonder what he had meant by "sowing the good seed," and a glance
he had thrown to his aide-de-camp (or "adjutant," as the officer might
more Germanly be called), but it is only after these five years that I
have perhaps guessed the riddle. The Kaiser must even then have begun
to count on the weakening of England by its threatened "war of the
sexes."
* * * * *
The Emperor proceeded to introduce his officer attendant, who was a
Count von H----. He informed me that he and his suite had travelled all
night in the royal train, to inspect the nearby garrison and breakfast
with the officers. Having a short time to spare, he had arranged to
motor up to Schloss ---- and have a look at the children, in order that
he might report on the Princes' health to their mother and father the
next time they saw each other.
"No sign of the malady coming out in them?" he inquired. "And the
youngest? He, too, is all right?"
On hearing that the baby was not as well as could be wished, he looked
anxious, but cheered up when he heard that the feverishness was caused
by cutting teeth.
"That is not contagious!" said he. "Though some of us might be glad to
'catch' a wisdom tooth."
When he made a "witticism," he laughed out aloud, opening his mouth,
throwing back his head slightly with a little jerk, and looking one
straight in the eyes to see if one had appreciated the fun of the
saying. The more one laughed the better he seemed pleased, and the more
lively he became, almost like a merry child. But when the subject was
dismissed, and he began to think of something else, I noticed--not only
on that day, but on others, later--that occasionally an odd, wandering,
strained expression came into his eyes. For a moment he would appear
older than his age; though when his mind was fixed upon himself, and
he was "braced" by self-consciousness, he looked almost young and very
vital, if fatter than his favorite photographs represented him.
That day at Schloss ---- the Emperor did not stay with us longer than
twenty minutes at most, but he managed to chat about many things
in that time, the latter part of which was spent in talking with
Lieutenant von X----, to find whom he sent the younger of my Princes.
* * * * *
I have heard that the Kaiser is always anxious as to the first
impression he makes, even upon the most insignificant middle-class
person; and having delivered himself of this harangue, he set to
work to smooth me down before departing. He asked questions about
myself, and the family (his friends) with whom I had lived in England.
With his head thrust forward and wagging slightly, he mentioned
several advantages which an English governess had over a German one;
and then he blurted out, sharply and suddenly, that, if my little
Princes' parents had listened to his advice, they would have had an
Englishwoman for their children two years sooner. "But the Princess
---- is the most self-willed woman I know," he said. "You may think I
am indiscreet! I am forever accused by newspapers of being indiscreet,
because I speak what I think. But this is no secret. You will learn
it for yourself if you are as intelligent as I suppose. She never
was intended by nature to be a wife and mother, though she would be
a charming person if she were neither. As it is she will do what
she likes in spite of everything and everyone. There! I have said
enough--or too much. Where is von X----?"
The Lieutenant was hovering in the background, ready for an auspicious
moment: and the Emperor turned his attention to the governor of my
elder Prince. It was not till he was ready to go that he had another
word for me, and then it was only "Auf wiedersehen." He graciously
put out his hand, palm down, for me to shake. I noticed how large
it was in contrast with the left, which he kept out of the way. It
was beautifully cared for, and there were more rings on it than an
Englishman or American would wear, but it was not an attractive shape,
and looked somehow unhealthy. As if in punishment to me for such a
thought, the big hand gave mine a fearful grip. It was like the closing
of a vise, and I could almost hear my bones crack. I wondered if the
Emperor had cultivated this trick to show how strong he was; but I
should have been glad to take his strength on faith.
I could not help wincing, though I tried not to let my face change. If
it did, he appeared to take no notice. He had finished with me, after a
military salute; and letting the children run by his side, he and his
attendant, with Lieutenant von X----, walked down the path....
II--STORY OF BERNHARDI AND THE KRUPPS
One of the most interesting things that happened to me in my first
year was a visit (with the Princess, of course) to Villa Hügel, the
house of Herr and Frau Krupp von Bohlen, in the Ruhr valley near
Essen. Bertha Krupp, the "Cannon Queen" and richest German heiress
in Germany, if not the world, had been married to the South German
diplomat, Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, less than four years. She was
only about twenty-four, but the coming of children had aged her as it
does all German women apparently, and she had already ceased to look
girlish. Her husband, who is sixteen or seventeen years senior to his
wife, might have been no more than ten years older, to judge by their
appearance when together. He put the name of Krupp in front of his own
immediately after his marriage with the heiress, and few people add the
"und Halbach" now, except officially....
While I was in the "Spatzenhaus" with the boys, Herr Krupp von Bohlen
brought in these four gentlemen and another, to see the celebrated
visitors' book kept there since Bertha and Barbara were children.
General von Bernhardi had arrived the night previous, and this was
my first sight of him, as well, of course, of Herr Eccius and Doctor
Linden.
I was more interested in the last of the three, because I had listened
while Frau Krupp von Bohlen repeated to the children a wonderful story
about the intelligence of some fish in the Naples Aquarium; and all I
knew then of General von Bernhardi was that he was considered a great
soldier, and had been the first officer to ride into Paris in 1871, or
some tale of that sort. However, the minute I saw him I felt that here
was a tremendous personality, and an intensely repellent one, a man to
be reckoned with. I determined to ask a great many questions concerning
him of the Countess, who knew everything about everybody, and did not
object to telling what she knew with embellishments.
My name was politely mentioned by the host, and the visiting gentlemen
all bowed to me. The only one who did so stiffly, as if he grudged
bending his thick, short neck for my benefit, was General von
Bernhardi. He gave me one sharp look from under his rather beetling
eyebrows, and I wondered if he despised all women, or had merely taken
a distaste to me.
"You are English?" he asked shortly, in German, his tone being that of
a man accustomed to throw out commands as you might throw a battle-ax.
"She was born in Washington," said Herr Krupp von Bohlen, in his
pleasant, cultivated voice. "Washington is the most interesting city
of the United States, and holds pleasant memories for me. Miss ----'s
grandfather was a distinguished American naval officer."
As he said this, he gave me a faint, rather humorous smile, which
I interpreted as a warning or request not to try explaining my
antecedents.
"Ach! That is better!" grunted the General. And I knew that, whatever
might be his attitude toward women in general, Englishwomen were anyhow
beyond the pale.
(Later I heard from the Countess that women were not much higher
than the "four-footed animal kingdom" for Bernhardi; that he loudly
contradicted his wife, even at hotel tables, when they traveled
together; that he always walked ahead of her in the street, and pushed
past her or even other ladies, if strangers to him, in order to go
first through a doorway.)
The General condescended to glance at me, and I thought again that he
was the most ruthless, brutal-looking man I had ever met, the very type
of militarism in flesh and blood--especially blood.
"You are a friend of the English?" he inquired.
I dared to stand up for England by answering that I thought her the
greatest country in the world.
"That is nonsense," was his comment. I shall never forget it, or the
cutting way in which it was spoken.
The Prince, though knowing me to be English (which Bernhardi, to do him
justice, did not), backed the General up, explaining for my benefit
as well as the children's that England might once have been nominally
the most powerful nation, owing to her talent for grabbing possessions
all over the world, and the cleverness of her diplomacy. But, he said,
that was different now, under the Liberal Government. England was going
down exactly as Rome had gone down, and the knell of her greatness was
sounding already. Not one of her colonies would stand by her when her
day of trouble should come, and most of them would go against her.
"You have only to read their own newspapers," said General Bernhardi,
"to see that the English know they are degenerating fast. But the hand
of Fate is on them. They are asleep, and they will wake up with a rude
shock only when it is too late."
III--STORY OF THE CROWN PRINCE AND THE CROWN PRINCESS
Some quite innocent tales were told by the tattlers, of the Crown
Princess. One was, that she had determined from the moment of her
engagement to his Imperial Highness, to be the most beautiful and best
dressed royal lady in Europe, as he strongly desired her to be, and
that it almost broke her heart when she began to realize that being
the mother of one baby after another was enlarging her slender waist.
She was supposed to have had a wax model of herself made, soon after
the birth of her first boy: face, hair, and figure all resembling her
own as faithfully as possible. According to the story, she had every
new fashion of hairdressing tried on this model, before deciding to
use it herself, and would have milliners fit it with hats, rather than
choose one to suit her own style merely from seeing it in the mirror.
Gowns were shown to her in the same way when they arrived from Paris
or Vienna, said the gossip who told me the tale, and the first time
the measurements which fitted the figurine proved too small for the
Princess's waist, there were tears.[2]
I did not fall in love with noisy Berlin, though Unter den Linden is
so fine and imposing, with all its beautiful shops and trees. The
city was so neat and square, so stolid and self-respecting that the
capital of Prussia made me think of the Prussian character as I soon
began to judge it. Potsdam I found more interesting because it is old
and historic. We spent a good deal of time in both places, and I used
often to see the Emperor motoring in a yellow car with a very small
Prussian royal standard on it to show who was the owner. The Crown
Prince was always dashing about, too, generally driving himself, very
recklessly, with a cigarette in his mouth, and looking about here and
there, everywhere except where he was going. He had a black imp for a
"mascot" on his automobile, a thing that waved its arms in a way to
frighten horses, though it never seemed to do so. And sometimes the
car would be full of ladies and children and several quite large dogs
that walked over their owners and tried to jump out. The crowds seemed
to like him, and the Crown Princess, whom they called "the sunshine of
Berlin," even more. She was always very gracious, bowing and smiling,
while the Crown Prince looked extremely bored. Still, if he had not
been hailed with enthusiasm, I am sure he would have been vexed.
Sometimes he would appear at a window of the palace, perhaps with one
of the royal children in his arms, pretending not to notice the people
outside gazing at him. But I thought he looked self-conscious, as if he
were doing it all for effect....
What I had heard from the Countess about the Crown Prince going to
India and Egypt in the character of a "glorified spy" (even though
I doubted the assertion) and the intimate talk of our Prince's
"influence" in the Secret Service department, made me think more about
spies and spying in a few months, than I had ever thought in my whole
life. I began to look about for spies, and wonder if any of the much
traveled, cultured people I met were engaged in spying with some of
the highest in the land virtually at their head. The last person I
should have connected with the profession of spying, however, was Herr
Steinhauer. Even now I cannot be sure that he and the famous "master
spy" of whom I have heard so much since I came back to England, are one
and the same; but everything goes to prove that they are....
IV--STORY OF A VISIT FROM COUNT ZEPPELIN
Once in Berlin, Count Zeppelin came, after having taken the Crown
Prince, and my little Princes' father as well as one or two of their
army friends, for a flight in his newest airship. Our Prince came back
very enthusiastic after his trip, and wanted his elder son to go, but
the Princess would not hear of this, and Count Zeppelin backed her up.
He said that he did not know enough about children's nerves to risk an
experiment, though he believed such boys as ours would stand it well.
He told them, when they both begged to go, that they must content
themselves with the "game" for a few years, and asked a good many
questions of Lieutenant von X---- (who was present by request) as to
how the little players got on with it. When he was talking of ordinary
things, his face looked good-natured, even benevolent, with his rather
scanty white hair and comfortable baldness. I thought, with a false
beard, he would have exactly the right figure and face for Santa Claus;
but as he listened to Lieutenant von X----'s account of how he taught
the Princes to "play the game," and examined some of the toy buildings
(so often powdered white with "bombs" that they could no longer be
brushed completely clean), his face hardened, looking very stern and
very old, his bright eyes almost hiding between wrinkled lids.
The Count took the elder boy between his knees, and catechised him as
to some of the rules. The little boy was shy at first, but soon plucked
up courage, and answered in a brisk and warlike way.
"This is a born soldier," said the airship inventor, laying his hand
on the child's hair. "By the time he is ready for sky battles, we
shall have something colossal to give him; but in the meantime, please
Heaven, we shall make very good use of what we have got."...
V--STORY OF GENERAL VON KLUCK--"THE OLD DARE-DEVIL"
Among other distinguished men who came to see my Princes and their
plays, was General von Kluck--another one of those "great dome heads!"
To me, it seemed the best part of his personality, and certainly the
development was far superior to what I had named the "German officer
head," a crude, unfinished type of head, which gives the impression
that the skull has hardened before the brain had time to finish
growing. General von Kluck did not talk at all to me, or appear to
take any interest in the toy soldiers' battle. He had the air of being
absent-minded and thinking deeply of something far away, in space. I
heard him say that "they" wanted him to go to France to look at it. Who
"they" were, I do not know, or what "it" was that they wished General
von Kluck to see. But I knew that nearly a year after that visit the
children had a present of a fancy red velvet box of chocolate. The
Princess herself brought it into the schoolroom (we seldom had a lesson
that was not interrupted in some way or other), and as the covering
had already been removed, I do not know if the box had been sent from
a distance or had come by hand. The Princess showed the boys General
von Kluck's visiting card, and the writing on it, which said, "French
chocolate from France, for two brave young German soldiers."
Later that day the Prince came and asked to see the box "from old von
Kluck," which by that time was half empty. He looked at the card, and
laughed. "The old dare-devil!" he chuckled. Then he said that, as we
had eaten so much in such a short time it showed that French chocolate
was good.
I seldom or never had any real conversation with the Prince, and it was
not my place to ask questions; but I wondered why General von Kluck
was an "old dare-devil" to go to France, and why the Prince seemed so
pleased and amused about it. Also I remembered what I had heard the
General say some months before, about France. I thought that there
must be a mystery about it, either official, or something to do with a
lady, perhaps a Frenchwoman. I know no more now than I knew then; but I
have heard it said since I came back to England, by a Frenchman, that
General von Kluck is supposed to have visited France incognito, to look
at some quarries near Soissons, which Germans bought and secretly made
ready to use as trenches, beginning their work a year before the war
broke out.
VI--STORY OF THE CONFESSION OF LIEUTENANT VON X----
I often asked Lieutenant von X---- what the German army thought about
the future of Germany, and I do not think he suspected in the least
that I had any motive except "intelligent interest." He had come to
look upon me as a family institution, and without telling lies in
so many words, I allowed him to believe that I felt Germany's vast
superiority over the rest of the world. It is a simple thing for any
woman to make any German man believe this. The only difficult thing for
him to understand is that a creature can be benighted enough to have a
contrary opinion.
Lieutenant von X---- admitted that the German army as well as navy
prayed for "The Day." He thought that Germany could "walk through
France," and she, being far superior to Russia in every way, could
not help but win in a war against that power, even without the help
of Austria. He seemed to feel contempt for Austria and everything
Austrian compared with what was German, but he said "she can be useful
to us." As for England, she might be a tougher job, but it would "have
to come," and with the improved Zeppelins (which England had been a
"stupid-head" not to copy as well as she could) and the Krupp secrets,
there was no doubt who would come out on top: Germany, the one power
on earth who deserved by her gloriousness to be over all others.
America, too, eventually must become Germanized, as Lieutenant von
X---- believed she was already well on the way to be, with her growing
German population, immense German financial interests, and influential
newspapers. The plans for American conquest were already mapped out
by the German War Office, who never left anything to chance. He said
that this was no secret, or he would not mention it. There was once
a hope that Germany and England might make a combination against the
United States, but that had been abandoned, he said. Once I should
have taken this for a joke, and also the expectation that when France
was conquered (with Belgium thrown in as a matter of course) Antwerp
and Dunkirk and Calais would all be German, becoming the strongest
military ports in the world; but I had learned better now. I knew that
Lieutenant von X----, who seldom originated any ideas of his own, was
simply repeating to me the sort of talk he heard among his brother
officers....
(The English-American Governess from this point relates a most
remarkable story, every word of which is vouched for as the truth.
She tells how Von Hindenburg, the Crown Prince, and other notables
met in secret sessions at the palace where she was residing; about
their relations with Prince Mohammed Ali and Enver Bey, the Envoy from
Turkey; the intrigues in the days before the outbreak of the war; the
scenes in the royal households when war was declared; and how she
escaped at midnight, September 15, 1914. It is a revelation that gives
one a clearer insight into the causes of the Great War and how the
Hohenzollerns had planned for many years to enter upon a conquest of
Europe and America.--EDITOR.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] All numerals throughout this volume relate to the stories herein
told--not to the chapters in the original books.
[2] The Governess here tells of an interesting little flirtation
between the Crown Princess and an Englishman because the Crown Prince
"had flirted furiously with several athletic but beautiful ladies at a
Winter Sports place in the Engadine."
"FROM CONVENT TO CONFLICT"--A VISION OF INFERNO
_Or, A Nun's Account of the Invasion of Belgium_
_By Sister Antonia, Convent des Filles de Marie, Willebroeck, Province
of Antwerp, Belgium_
This is the appeal of a nun, who in the fullness of her heart tells
the American people of the noble efforts of her Sisters to bring
solace and comfort to agonized Belgium. Sisters Mary Antonia and Mary
Cecilia were sent to the United States with the approval of Cardinal
Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, with the following credentials:
"The Superior of the Convent of the Daughters of Mary, Willebroeck,
Provence of Antwerp, Belgium, state by this present (letter) that
the Sisters Mary Antonia and Mary Cecilia are sent to the United
States in order to examine if there are means of establishing a
colony (mission) of the Daughters of Mary there; she gives to Sister
M. Antonia the power to act in her name as to taking the measures
necessary to this effect." Sister Antonia tells her noble story in
a little volume (published by _John Murphy Company_, Baltimore.
Copyright, 1916) with this introduction: "The hope is indulged that
the harrowing scenes witnessed by the author in Belgium, after the
German invasion in 1914, may induce her own countrymen and women to
more fully appreciate the blessings of peace. The events narrated
are set forth as actually occurring, and--'with malice to none, with
charity for all.' Any profits derived from its favorable reception
by the reading public or the charitably inclined are to be devoted
to the reconstruction and repair of our school and convent, damaged
during the engagement at the Fortress of Willebroeck, or for the
establishment of a sewing school, with a lace making department, for
young women in America or England, as our Reverend Superiors may
decide." The editors take pleasure in commending this book and in
extending their appreciation to the publishers for their courtesy in
allowing these selections.
I--STORY OF THE FATEFUL DAY IN THE CONVENT
A merry group of Convent girls, in charge of Sister guardian, was
seated in the shade of a huge old pear tree, discussing the joys and
expectations of the approaching summer vacation. High are the walls
enclosing this ancient cloister, and many are the gay young hearts
protected and developed within its shady precincts.
Bright are the faces and happy the hearts of more than one hundred
young girls on this midsummer day in the memorable year 1914....
July's sun sank gently away on the western horizon, and its last rays
lit up the ripening fruit, the plants and flowers in the garden. It
seemed to linger for a last farewell to the groups of merry children
who, unconscious of their fast-approaching woe, were cheerfully singing
Belgium's well-known national song, "The Proud Flemish Lion."
In a few moments the "Golden Gate" closed on a field of purple haze,
shutting out that blessed glimpse of heaven, while the black shroud
of the most dismal night in history darkened the sky of that hapless
nation.
The Sisters were together in the evening recreation of that fateful
day, when word was received that King Albert of Belgium, in order to
fulfill his obligations of neutrality, had refused the Kaiser's army
access to his territory to attack the French. Had a thunderbolt fallen
from a clear sky, or an earthquake shaken the ground under foot, it
would scarcely have surprised or terrorized the people more than did
the Kaiser's declaration of war against this free and happy little
kingdom....
One Sunday morning, about the middle of August, an unusual tumult was
heard on the street. The door bell was loudly rung, and a messenger
admitted with news that the officers of the Belgian War Department had
commanded everything within firing range of the fortress to be cleared
away at once. For some time previous the soldiers had been busy cutting
down the groves and all the trees in the immediate vicinity of the
fortress. The poor people were given just three hours to get away with
bag and baggage.
This was a terrible misfortune for about six hundred families, whose
dwellings, being located within the limits prescribed, had to be
leveled to the ground. Even the tombstones in the cemetery, together
with all the crops, trees, haystacks, barns and everything within range
of the gaping mouths of the cannon, had to be laid flat or taken away.
No wonder that the people raced to and fro that hot Sunday morning,
carrying bundles, dragging wagons with household furniture and
fixtures; wheeling trunks, clothing, stoves, pictures, bedding and
every article that could be taken up and carried away. Tears and
perspiration rolled over the cheeks of men and women, whose faces
glowed from the heat and intense excitement....
II--STORY OF THE SOLDIERS AT LIEGE
In the meantime a most terrible battle was taking place at the
fortification of Liege. Was ever attack so strong or resistance more
determined? Belgian officers said, "The enemy were twenty to one
against us; but, being obliged to face the terrible fires of the
fortress, their ranks were cut down in about the same manner as wheat
is cut off by the reaper." "So great was the number of the Germans
that they seemed to spring up out of the ground." "They crawled ahead
on hands and feet, and at a given signal sprang erect and fired, and
then again prostrated themselves. Thus they advanced, avoiding as much
as possible the heavy fires in front." Another Belgian officer at
the fortress during the battle said: "It resembled a storm of fiery
hailstones from a cloud of smoke, in an atmosphere suffocating with
heat and the smell of powder."
Eye-witnesses relate that heaps of slain, yards high, were found on
the battlefield, while columns of lifeless bodies were observed in a
standing position, there being no place for the dead to fall.
A story was told by one of the Belgian officers of a German soldier
who, when wounded by a Belgian in a hand-to-hand combat, took out a
coin and presented it. The Belgian, surprised, exclaimed "Zijt gij
zot?" (Are you crazy?) "Do you not know that I've broken your arm?"
"Yes," said the German, "This is to show my gratitude for the favor
you've rendered me, since it gives me the opportunity of leaving the
battlefield."
Much was said about the valor of the soldiers on both sides during the
siege of Liege. The Germans were obliged to advance in the face of
destructive fires. If one should retreat, he would be pierced by the
bayonet of the soldier behind him....
While facing death in this first great battle at the fortress of Liege,
one of the soldiers began to sing the well-known national hymn, "The
Proud Flemish Lion." Immediately the strains were taken up by the whole
regiment, and thus singing, they advanced until hundreds of them fell
in that awful conflict.
In the heaviest of the fray we were told that King Albert had placed
himself in the lines with his soldiers. He did not desire to be called
king, but comrade. His military dress was distinguished from the
others by only a small mark on one of the sleeves. He attended to the
correspondence for his soldiers and was regarded by them as a friend
and father, under whose guidance they were ready to fight and die.
When the siege was over he visited the wounded in many of the hospitals
and addressed each soldier in person....
After the fall of Liege and Namur, the destruction of Louvain and a
number of noted cities, towns and villages, our minds were concerned
with that awe-inspiring event--the advance of the enemy to Brussels.
Well do we remember that beautiful summer evening, when our prayers and
evening meditation in the chapel were disturbed for about an hour by
the continuous whirl of automobiles passing the Convent. We were told
that evening that it was the departure of the legislative body from
Brussels to Antwerp, with the archives and treasures of the Government.
Our hearts seemed to grow cold and leaden within us as we sat there
hoping, praying, fearing, yet instinctively feeling the doom so rapidly
approaching.
One gloomy, rainy day, word came that over two thousand soldiers of the
Civil Guard had lowered their weapons at the approach of the enemy and
quietly surrendered the City of Brussels, Belgium's beautiful capital.
To have fought without fortifications against such superior forces as
the Germans possessed would have been a useless sacrifice of life.
III--STORY OF THE PRIESTS, DOCTORS AND RED CROSS NURSES
One afternoon in the middle of August a large, heavy wagon was drawn
into the yard. It bore the flag of the Red Cross on top, and on the
side in great white letters the words "Military Hospital."
In a few minutes a fleshy little gentleman, who at once distinguished
himself as the "Chef" (chief), and a number of other gentlemen, about
thirty-five in all, wearing white bands with red crosses on their
arms, and long white linen coats over their uniforms, such as bakers
sometimes wear, were seen hurrying to and fro, unpacking and carrying
their various instruments and utensils to the operating room.
A military chaplain and four or more doctors accompanied the group. All
except the chaplain were dressed in uniform. Several young ladies of
Willebroeck, former members of our Boarding-school, dressed in white
and wearing the head-dress and arm-band of the Red Cross, came next
day and graciously presented themselves to aid in taking care of the
wounded.
Coffins were provided by our village for the soldiers who died in our
hospital....
The condition of the poor maimed soldiers (as they were brought into
the convent) was sad to behold. One man, we were told by the Red Cross
nurses, had twenty bullets in his body; another was pierced through
the lung by a bayonet; one, aged twenty, lost an arm to the shoulder;
one had only one or two fingers left on the hand; one was crazed by a
bullet which touched the brain; another was shot through the mouth,
the bullet lodging in the back of the throat. His case was especially
distressing, his the most intense suffering of all. He lived for a week
without eating, drinking or speaking.
Three wounded Germans were brought in, being picked up on the
battlefield by members of our division of the Red Cross. They seemed
greatly distressed and afraid, positively refusing to touch food or
drink of which the Sisters or nurses did not first partake.
One day we were called upon to witness a most sorrowful sight. A small
farmer's wagon drove up to the gate, bearing the lifeless bodies of two
children, a girl aged eight and her brother, aged fourteen. The mother
and a smaller child were also in the wagon. The mother related that
they were taking flight as refugees. Seeing the enemy, they hastened to
retreat, and were fired at by the soldiers. The children, who were in
the back part of the wagon, were struck and wounded in a most frightful
manner. The little girl's face was nearly all torn off, and the back of
the boy's head had been shattered.
At the approach of Belgian soldiers, who fired at the enemy, the mother
was enabled to pick up the lifeless bodies of her children, put them
into the wagon and drive with them to our hospital, which was the
nearest post.
A little after four o'clock one afternoon, shortly before the departure
of the first division of the Red Cross, our attention was attracted by
the heavy and continuous tread of cavalry and soldiers passing along
the street. It was the Belgian army returning from a long and tiresome
march.
Here was found a different kind of suffering from that which was
ministered to in the hospital. Hunger and fatigue were stamped upon
the countenance of each of these men, who, about a month before were
industrious citizens at their daily occupations.
There were in the ranks priests, in their long black cassocks, wearing
the arm-band of the Red Cross, who, as volunteer chaplains, had joined
the army and were ever at the service of the soldiers on the march,
and even on the battlefield. We were informed that priests, and those
preparing for the priesthood, were not obliged to serve in the army in
time of peace; but, in case of war, they may be called upon to serve
as military chaplains. When the present war broke out, hundreds of
them joined as volunteers, marching in the ranks with the soldiers and
undergoing their sufferings and hardships.
Many doctors rode along in motor cars. They were distinguished by a
special dark-colored uniform, with a red collar and gilded trimmings.
They also wore the arm-band of the Red Cross. Officers on horseback led
each division of the army. The faces of all were disfigured with sweat
and dust, while dust in abundance covered shoes and clothing. Some were
staggering along, unable to walk straight, owing to the hard shoes and
blistered feet. Hollow-cheeked, and with eyes which seemed to protrude
from their sockets, they passed along, piteously imploring a morsel of
bread.
Fortunately, the abundant supply of bread in the Convent had just been
increased by the addition of forty of those immense loaves found only
in Belgium. All of this was hastily cut, buttered and, with baskets
full of pears, dealt out, piece by piece, to the passing soldiers,
until, finally, only a small portion remained over for the supper of
the wounded remaining in the hospital....
Before the command was given to enter the schools, we saw soldiers,
among whom were also priests, lying on the ground on the opposite side
of the street, even as horses which, having run a great distance, fall
down from sheer exhaustion. Some of these, we learned afterwards,
did not have their shoes off in nearly three weeks. The socks, hard
and worn out, were in some cases stamped into the blistered feet in
such a manner as to cause excruciating pain. In some cases the feet
were so painful and swollen that the patients had to be carried in on
stretchers. In the meantime, several ambulance wagons had stopped at
the school gate, and numerous wounded were carried in.
We retired at a late hour one night amid the incessant booming of
cannon. Scarcely were our eyes closed when some one passed in the
dormitory and knocked at each door. "Ave Maria," was the quiet
greeting. "Deo Gratias," the response. "What is it?" was asked. "The
Germans have entered and are crossing the bridge," was the reply.
With beating heart and trembling limbs, each sprang up and was dressed
in a few minutes. In a state of great excitement, all stood in the hall
ready to receive orders from the Superior, who had gone downstairs to
make inquiries about the situation....
The crackling of shells, the heavy cannonade from the fortress and
field cannon, and the occasional proximity of those hostile aeroplanes,
together with the reports of atrocities and destruction taking place
around us, were fearsome in the extreme.
In striking contrast to the noise and commotion on all sides, was
the calm tranquility which reigned in the chapel. The Sacred Heart
stretched forth that same Fatherly hand which assisted the apostle
sinking on the Sea of Galilee. The altar was still and solitary, but
the little red light flickered in the sanctuary lamp and told of Him
whose word alone stilled the winds and calmed the angry waves....
IV--STORY OF THE HEROIC REFUGEES
Sorrowful scenes were witnessed along the streets. Our attention and
sympathies were particularly attracted to the flight of the refugees.
For hours and days and weeks the doleful procession passed along the
streets; a living stream made up of all ranks and classes of society.
Here were seen the poor old farmer's household, whose sons had gone to
the front; and young married women, with small children in their arms
or by their sides, whose husbands had to don the soldier's uniform
and go to the war. The sick, the old and the feeble were taken from
their beds of suffering and, with shawls or blankets thrown over
their shoulders, placed in carts or wagons and carried away, perhaps,
to perish by the roadside. We have seen cripples and small children
hurriedly driven along the street in wheelbarrows.
Packages carried on their arms, on their backs, or in little carts were
about all that the poor people could take....
It was most pitiful to see these poor people, whose only object was to
get away as far as possible from the scenes of conflict. Some carried
small loaves of bread; others had a little hay or straw in their
wagons; some led a cow or two; others two or three pigs. In some of
the carts we recognized faces of our former pupils, who only one short
month before were longing for the pleasant vacation days. Their fathers
or brothers were in the army, and their homes forsaken. Some children
had lost their parents and were crying piteously.
When the Sisters left the parish church, where they daily took part
in the public devotions for peace, they were besieged by hundreds of
these poor, half-frantic refugees, beseeching shelter over night in the
church or schools, which were already full to overflowing. The days
were warm and pleasant, but the nights were very chilly and sometimes
rainy. Where would those poor people go and what could they do without
food or shelter for all those little children? The friendly stars
looked down from the realms above upon thousands who lay along the
roadside, while others crowded the barns and country schools, or made
rude tent-like shelters in the bed of the new canal.
The Sisters, wholly absorbed in their work for the wounded, and relying
on the word of the Belgian officers, that timely warning would be given
as to the necessity of departure, had as yet no idea of joining the
throngs of refugees who continuously filed through the main streets.
The shocks of the cannonade from the fortress caused the buildings
to tremble on their foundations, while the ground under foot seemed
agitated as by an earthquake. A large number of wounded soldiers had
been brought in the night before, and three or four lay dead in the
mortuary.
Our Sisters and servant maids, as also the generous women refugees of
Willebroeck, continued their sickening task in the laundry. In wooden
shoes they stood at those large cement tubs while suds and blood-dyed
water streamed over the stone floor.
Night closed in again, but brought neither rest nor consolation.
Fearing to retire, some of the Sisters remained in the chapel, while
others spent the tedious hours of that dreary night in the refectory
or adjoining rooms, and kept busy making surgical dressings for the
wounded, of whom a larger number than usual had been brought into the
hospital.
At intervals during the night the cannonade was heard, while the
searchlights of the fortress penetrated the clouds on the lookout for
the murderous Zeppelins. Morning came at last, with an increase of work
and anguish. The enemy, with their usual determination, were trying to
force their way through to Antwerp, while the Belgians were equally
determined to prevent them, or to at least check their progress.
An officer called for the Reverend Superior and said in an excited
manner, "Weg van hier, aanstonds! Geen tijd te verliezen." (Away from
here at once! No time to be lost.) This message flew from one to
another, even to the terror-stricken hearts of the numerous wounded.
Impossible to describe the scenes which followed. In a few minutes
a long line of motor cars came whirling up to the gate to take away
the wounded who, some of them in an almost dying condition, were
being dragged out of their beds, dressed and hurriedly carried away
to Antwerp, or to another place of refuge. One can never forget the
look of anguish on some of their faces, while others seemed totally
indifferent to all that was taking place around them....
(Sister Antonia here tells about the flight of the nuns with the
refugees to Antwerp and the sea; the exodus to England and Holland; and
finally her own voyage to America.--EDITOR.)
"WAR LETTERS OF AN AMERICAN WOMAN"--IN BLEEDING FRANCE
_Experiences in the Siege of Paris_
_By Marie Van Vorst, Distinguished American Novelist Residing in Paris_
These letters present a singularly vivid chronicle of an American
woman's experiences during the Great War. She was living in Paris,
but brought her mother to London for safety. Here she went through
a course of Red Cross lectures and returned to become a nurse at
the American Ambulance in the Pasteur Institute in Neuilly, then
under the control of Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt. Her brilliant intellect
and sympathizing heart are brought out in her letters to friends
in America. Her whole soul is in the cause of the Allies and in
her letters she tells many beautiful stories of her experiences in
Paris, London, Nice and Rome. To read her impressions as she wrote
them down for her friends is to recapture the thrill and the uplift,
the sorrows and the hopes, the high resolves and unshakable purpose
of those that will live forever in history. Several letters are
reprinted here by permission of her publisher, _John Lane Company_,
London and New York.
I--STORY OF ROBERT LE ROUX
_To Miss Anna Lusk, New York._
Paris, Nov. 7th, 1914.
DEAREST ANNA:
In the contemplation of the great griefs of those who have lost their
own, of those who have given their all; in the contemplation of the
bravest country in the world--Belgium--ravaged from frontier to
frontier, laid barren and waste, smoked, ruined, devastated and scarred
by wholesale massacre of civilian women and children, our hearts have
been crushed. Our souls have been appalled by the burdens of others,
and by the future problems of Belgium, not to speak of one quarter
of France. Much of the north has been wiped out, and the stories of
individual suffering and insults too terrible to dwell upon, you will
say.
One of my old clerks in the Bon Marché has had his little nephew come
back to him from Germany--a peaceful young middle-class man pursuing
his studies in a German town--with both his hands cut off!
The other day in the Gare du Nord, waiting for a train, there was a
stunning Belgian officer--not a private--he was a captain in one of
the crack regiments. His excitement was terrible, he was almost beside
himself with anguish and with anger. In a little village he had seen
one woman violated by seven Germans in the presence of her husband;
then the husband shot, the woman shot and her little baby cut in four
pieces on a butcher's block. You can hardly call this the common
course of war. He was a Belgian gentleman, and I should consider this
a document of truth.
But there are so many that I cannot prolong, and will not--what is the
use? Every now and then a people needs to be wiped off the face of the
earth, or a contingent blotted out that a newer and finer civilization
shall prevail. Certainly this is the case with Germany. They say here
that the Emperor and Crown Prince will be tried by law and sentenced
to death as common criminals, the Emperor as a murderer and the Crown
Prince as a robber, for his goods trains were stacked with booty and
loot. Think of it, a Prince! Everywhere the Germans pass they leave
their filthy insults behind them, in the beautiful châteaux and in the
delicate rooms of the French women--the indications of their passing,
not deeds of noble heroism that can be told of foes as well as of
friends, but filthy souvenirs of the passing of creatures for whom the
word "barbarism" is too mild!
* * * * *
Here is a more spiritual picture.
Robert Le Roux, jun., was buried yesterday. You will have read in the
previous pages here the story of his exploits on the battlefield--the
closing of his young life in bravely leading his troops up the hill to
certain death. And yesterday I went to St. Germain to his funeral.
The last time I had seen young Robert he was a little boy, in short
breeches and socks. His mother brought him to Versailles and he played
with us in the garden there--a strong, splendid-looking young French
boy. Now I was going to his funeral, and he was engaged to be married,
with all his hopes before him, and on this same train was his little
fiancée, in her long crêpe veil, broken-hearted; and his little sister,
and the father, who had followed his son's campaign with such ardor and
such tenderness; and his uncle, Dr. D., of whom I spoke previously--the
splendid sergeant-major whose only son had just been killed by the
enemy. A train of sorrow!--and only one of so many, so many.
The church at St. Germain is simple and very old. The doors were all
hung with heavy snow-white cloth, and before the door stood the funeral
car drawn by white horses, all in white, and instead of melancholy
hearse plumes there were bunches of flags, and over all hung the
November mist enveloping, softening, and there was a big company of
Cuirassiers guarding the road.
We went in, and the church was crowded from the nave to the doors, and
all the nave and the little chapels were blazing with the lily lights
of the candles. It was all so white and so pure, so effulgent, so
starry. There was an uplift about it, an élan; tragic as it all was,
there was ever that feeling of beyond, beyond!
Before the altar lay the young man's coffin--that leaden coffin that
had stood by his father in the fortress of Toul for three weeks,
waiting for the dead. It was completely covered by the French flag, and
the candles burnt around it.
Beside me was a woman with her husband. She wept so bitterly through
the whole service that my heart was just wrung for her, and her
husband's face, as his red-lidded eyes stared out in the misty church,
was one of the most tragic things I ever saw. I wept, of course, and I
have not cried very much since the war broke out, but her grief was too
much for me. Finally she turned to me and said: "Madame, I only had one
son, he was so charming, so good; he has fallen before the enemy, and I
don't know where he is buried!" Just think of it! There she was, at the
funeral of another man's son because he was a soldier! Link upon link
of sorrow and suffering--such broken hearts....
The whole service was musical, nothing else but violins and harps. It
was the most beautiful thing I ever heard, so quiet and so sweet; and
that little group touched me profoundly--Le Roux with his daughter and
the little fiancée--and that was all. In that coffin lying under the
flag Bessie had placed at Toul her little silk pillow for the young
soldier's head, and his love-letters in a little packet lay by his
side. Around his arm he had worn a little ribbon taken from the hair of
his sweetheart, and at the very last when he was dying and the hospital
nurse was about to unknot it--I don't know why--the boy put up his
feeble hand to prevent her; of course they buried it with him, and, as
you think of it, you can hear that unknown voice on the battlefield,
that, as the stretcher-bearers came to look for the wounded, called
out: "Take him, he is engaged to be married; and leave me."
Oh, if out of it all arise a better civilization, purer motives, less
greed for money, more humanitarian and unselfish aims, we can bear it.
I think of America with an ever-increasing love; I am proud to belong
to that young and far-off country, but if our voice is raised now
in encouragement for Belgium, encouragement for the Allies, and in
reprobation of these acts of dishonorable warfare and cruel barbarism,
I shall love my country more.
How superb the figure of the Belgian king is, standing there among the
remnant of his army, and surrounded by his destroyed and ruined empire,
and the cries of the people in his ears--a sublime figure....
II--STORY OF A SCHOOL TEACHER--AND A GARDENER
_To Mr. F. B. Van Vorst, N. Y._
Nov. 20th, 1914.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I wonder, as I sit here, in one of those rare, quiet moments that
fall in a nurse's day, whilst I am preparing my charts, what they are
thinking of in this silent room.
This group is singularly silent. They do not talk from bed to bed,
as some of the more loquacious do. Directly opposite is one of those
fragile bits of humanity that the violent wind of war has blown, like
an unresisting leaf, into the vortex. Monsieur Gilet is a humble
little school teacher from some humble little village school in a once
peaceful commune, where in another little village school his humble
little wife teaches school as he does. He is so light and so frail that
I can lift him myself with ease. He has a shrapnel wound in his side
and they have not found the ball. His thin cheeks are scarlet. He is
gentleness and sweetness itself. What has he ever done to be crucified
like this? Monsieur Gilet is not thinking of his burning wound. He is
thinking of the little woman in the province of Cher. How can she come
to see him? She has no congé. When will she come to see him? For his
life is all there in that war-shattered country. She has a baby twelve
weeks old, born since he went to battle. That's what he is thinking of.
When will she come?
On his right is a superb Arab, with an arm and hand so broken and
so mutilated that it is hard to hold it without shuddering when the
doctors drain it. On his head I have carefully adjusted a bright yellow
flannel fez. His mild, docile eyes follow the nurse as she does for
him the few little things she can to make him more at ease. For every
service done, he thanks her in a sweet, soft voice. Just now, when
I left him to come over here and sit down before my table, his eyes
filled with tears. He can say a few words of French. He kisses my hand
with Oriental grace. "Merci, ma mère."
On Monsieur Gilet's left lies a man whose language is as hard to
understand, very nearly, as the Arab's--almost unintelligible--a
_patois_ of the Midi. He is a gardener, used only to the care of plants
and flowers. He is a big, rugged giant, and so strong, and so silent
a sufferer that since his entrance to the hospital he has not made
one murmur or one complaint, or asked one service, and excepting when
spoken to, he never says a word. Then he gives you a radiant smile and
some token of gratitude. They operated on him to-day. There is shrapnel
in his eye. He will never fully see his gardens again, and he is so
strong and so patient and so able to bear pain, that they operated
on him without anæsthetics, and he walked to and from the operating
room--a brave, silent, docile giant, singularly appealing.... He is
thinking of his gardens, trodden out of all semblance of beauty, for
he had been working in the north before the heel of the barbarian
crushed out his flowers for ever and blotted out his sight.
III--STORY OF THE BOYS WHO SING "TIPPERARY"
_To Mr. F. B. Van Vorst, Hackensack, N. J._
Paris, Dec. 4th, 1914.
MY DEAR FREDERICK,
To-morrow will be my last day at the hospital, as I start in the
evening for Nice, on my way to Rome. I have lately found myself sole
nurse in a ward with nine men....
It is full of English Tommies, and unless you nurse them and help those
English boys, you don't know what they are. They are too lovely and
too fine for words. One perfectly fine young fellow has had his leg
amputated at the thigh--his life ruined for ever. Another is blind,
staring into the visions of his past--he will never have anything else
to look at again. The chief amusement of these fellows seems to be
watching the funerals, and they call me to run to the window to see
the hearses covered with the Union Jack or the French flag, and they
find nothing mournful in the processions. One Sunday afternoon, as I
sat there, leaning against a table in the middle of the room, a few
country flowers in a vase near by--for Miss Hickman asks for country
flowers for country lads--I asked them if they wouldn't sing me a song
that I had heard a good deal about but had never heard sung. "What's
that, nurse?" asked the boy without a leg. "Tipperary"--for I had never
heard it. "Why, of course we will, won't we, lads?" and he said to his
companion, only nineteen, from some English shire: "You hit the tune."
And the boy "hit it," and they sang me "Tipperary." Before they had
finished I had turned away and walked out into the corridor to hide the
way it made me feel, and I heard it softly through the door as they
finished: "It's a long way to Tipperary." I shall never hear it again
without seeing the picture of that ward, the country flowers and the
country lads, and hearing the measure of that marching tune....
I have seen Mrs. Vanderbilt constantly. She seems to be ubiquitous.
Wherever there's need, she is to be found--whether in the
operating-room, the bandaging-room, or in one of the great wards where
she has charge. I have found her everywhere, just at the right moment:
calm, poised, dignified, capable and sweet. But none of this expresses
the strength that she has been to the American Ambulance since its
foundation--the heart and soul of its organization; and her personal
gifts to it have been generous beyond words. I don't know what we shall
do when she finally returns to America. She animates the whole place
with her spirit and her soul....
IV--STORY OF THE "MIRACLES" OF THE BATTLES
_Madame Le Roux, New York._
Paris, June 15th, 1915.
DEAR BESSIE,
Lady K. told such a beautiful thing, out at Bridget's, that I forgot
to tell you before. She said that it was bruited in England that there
had been a miracle wrought when von Kluck's army so unexpectedly
turned back from Paris, which without doubt they could have taken.
She said that it was rumored--and not only in the ranks, but among
higher men--that there appeared in the sky a singular phenomenon, and
that the German prisoners bore witness that a cavalcade like heavenly
archers suddenly filled the heavens and shot down upon the Germans a
rain of deadly darts. As you know, this was long before the use of any
asphyxiating gas or turpinite; but on the field were found hundreds of
Germans, stone dead, immovable, who had fallen without any apparent
cause. You remember the armies of the old Scriptures that "the breath
of the Lord withered away."
Lady K. said that the rumor that the woods of Compiègne were full of
troops when the Germans made that famous retreat was absolutely untrue.
There were no troops in the forest, and what they saw were, again,
celestial soldiers.
No doubt these tales come always in the history of war. But, my
dear, how beautiful they are--how much more heavenly and inspired
than the beatings on the slavish backs of the German Uhlans, of the
half-drunken, brutish hordes! Everywhere is the same uplifting spirit.
When I speak of Paris being sad, it _is_; but it is not depressing.
There is a difference. If it were not for the absence of those I love,
I would rather be here than anywhere. In church on Sunday, the Bishop
said that at one of the services near the firing line, when he asked
the question: "How many of the men here have felt, since they came out,
a stirring in their hearts, an awakening of the spirit?" as far as he
could see, every hand was raised. And men have gone home to England,
without arms and without legs, maimed for life, and have been heard to
say that in spite of their material anguish they regretted nothing, for
they had found their souls....
I ought to tell you that all credulous and believing France thinks
that the country is being saved by Jeanne d'Arc. You hear them say it
everywhere. Just think of it, in the twentieth century, my dear, when
the war is being fought in the air and under the sea, by machines so
modern that only the latest invention can triumph! Think of it, and
then consider that there remains enough of spiritual faith to believe
that the salvation of a country comes through prayer.
V--STORY OF COMPTE HENRY DADVISARD
_To Mrs. Louis Stoddard, N. Y._
June 25th, 1915.
MY DEAR MOLLY, [3] Mme. de S. told me last night that once during the
last year she had a little spray of blossoms that had been blessed by
the Pope, and in writing to Henry on the field, she sent him a little
bit of green--a tiny leaf pinned on a loving letter. When she looked
through the uniform sent back to her, a few days ago, in his pocket was
this little card, all stained with his blood. This card, with her few
loving words, was all he carried on him into that sacred field. I must
not forget the belt he wore around him, which she had made with her
own hands, and it contained some money and in one of the folds of the
chamois was a prayer that she had written out for him. The paper was so
worn with reading and unfolding and folding that it was like something
used by the years.
All the night before he went to that great battle, he spent in prayer.
His aide told Mme. de S. that he had not closed his eyes. They say that
if he could have been taken immediately from the field, he would have
been saved, for he bled to death.
I only suppose that you will be interested in these details because
they mark the going out of such a brilliant life, and it is the
intimate story of one soldier who has laid down his life, after months
and months of fighting and self-abnegation and loneliness, on that
distant field.
From the time he left her in August until his death, he had never seen
any of his family--not a soul. I want to tell you the way she said
good-bye to him, for I never knew it until last night. She had expected
him to lunch--imagine!--and received the news by telephone that he
was leaving his "quartier" in an hour. She rushed there to see the
Cuirassiers, mounted, in their service uniform, the helmets all covered
with khaki, clattering out of the yard. She sat in the motor and he
came out to her, all ready to go; and they said good-bye, there in the
motor, he sitting by her side, holding her hands. She said he looked
then like the dead--so grave. You know he was a soldier, passionately
devoted to his career. He had made all the African campaign and had
an illustrious record. She says he asked her for her blessing and she
lightly touched the helmet covered with khaki and gave it him. And
neither shed a tear. And he kissed her good-bye. She never saw him
again....
She said that his General told her as follows: "The night before the
engagement, Henry Dadvisard came into my miserable little shack on
the field. He said to me: 'Mon général, just show me on the map where
the Germans are.' A map was hanging on the wall and I indicated with
my finger: '_Les Allemands sont là, mon enfant_.' And Dadvisard said:
'Why, is that all there is to do--just to go out and attack them there?
Why, we'll be coming back as gaily as if it were from the races!' He
turned to go, saying: '_Au revoir_, mon général.' But at the door
he paused, and I looked up and saw him and he said: '_Adieu_, mon
général.' And then I saw in his eyes a singular look, something like
an appeal from one human soul to another, for a word, a touch, before
going out to that sacrifice. I did not dare to say anything but what I
did say: '_Bon courage, mon enfant; bonne chance!_' And he went...."
After telling me this, Mme. de S. took out his watch, which she carries
with her now--a gold watch, with his crest upon it--the one he had
carried through all his campaigns, with the soldier's rough chain
hanging from it. It had stopped at half-past ten; as he had wound it
the night before, the watch had gone on after his heart had ceased to
beat....
The day before Henry left his own company of Cuirassiers to go into
the dangerous and terrible experiences of the trenches, to take up
that duty which ended in his laying down his life, he gathered his men
together and bade them good-bye. Last night dear Mme. de S. showed me
his soldier's notebook, in which he had written the few words that he
meant to say to his men. I begged her to let me have them: I give them
to you. This address stands to me as one of the most beautiful things
I have ever read.
General Foch paid him a fine tribute when he mentioned him in
despatches, and this mention of him was accompanied by the bestowal of
the Croix de Guerre.
"Henry Dadvisard, warm-hearted and vibrant; a remarkable leader of men.
He asked to be transferred to the infantry, in order to offer more
fully to his country his admirable military talents. He fell gloriously
on the 27th of April, leading an attack at the head of his company."
VI--STORY OF THE MORGAN-MARBURY HOSPITAL
_To Mrs. Morawetz, New York._
Paris, June 22nd, 1915.
DEAREST VIOLET,
I went out the other day with Madame Marie to Versailles, _en auto_. I
wanted to see the little hospital that Anne Morgan and Bessie Marbury
have given out there. One of their pretty little houses is in the
charge of some gentle-faced sisters of charity, and out in the garden,
with the roses blooming and the sweet-scented hay being raked in great
piles, were sitting a lieutenant, convalescing, and his _commandant_,
who had come to see him, also wounded. Both men wore the Legion of
Honor on their breasts. They were talking about the campaign. The
lieutenant wore his _képi_ well down over his face; he was totally
blind for ever, at thirty! His interest in talking to his superior
officer was so great that you can fancy I only stopped a second to
speak to him. There were great scars on his hands and his face and neck
were scarred too. I heard him say, as I turned to walk away: "_J'aime
aussi causer des jours quand nous étions collégiens à Saint-Cyr. Ces
souvenirs sont plus doux._" It was terribly touching.
VII--STORY OF THE GAY FRENCH OFFICER
_To Miss B. S. Andrews, New York._
Paris, July 12th, 1915.
DEAREST BELLE,
Mme. de S. is going next week on the cruel and dreadful mission of
disinterring her belovèd dead. She is going down into the tomb in
Belgium--if she can get through--to take her boy out of the charnel
house, where he is buried under six other coffins. "God has his soul,"
she says; "I only ask his body" ... if she can find it. She has told
no one of her griefs, but to me; and she bears herself like a woman of
twenty-five, gallantly....
There is one gay officer of twenty-nine, and six feet two. I don't
think you'd speak of "little insignificant Frenchmen" if you could see
him! He's superb. One finger off on the left hand, and the right hand
utterly useless. So we work at that for fifteen minutes, and all the
little group of soldiers linger, because they love him so--he's so
killing, so witty, so gay. He screams in mock agony, and laughs and
makes the most outrageous jokes; and when he has gone, one of them says
to me: "_Il est adoré par ses hommes, madame; il est si courageux._"
The spirit between men and officers is so beautiful in the French army.
They are all brothers. None of that lordly, arrogant oppression of
the Germans. One of the soldiers said to me: "_Il n'y a pas de grade,
maintenant, madame. Nous sommes tous des hommes qui aiment le pays._"
And Lieutenant ----, of whom I have just been speaking. I said to him:
"Tell me something about the campaign, monsieur." And he answered:
"Oh, madame, I would like to tell you about the _men_. They're superb.
I have never seen anything like it. I had to lead a charge with 156
men into what we all believed was certain death. Why," he said, "they
went like schoolboys--shouting, laughing, pushing each other up the
parapet.... We came back nine strong," he said.
Dr. Blake has been magnificent. His operations are something beyond
words. Men came in to me for treatment and told me that he worked
actual miracles with faces that were blown off, building new jaws, and
oh, Heavens! I don't know what not.
VIII--STORY OF A FRENCH MOTHER AT MASS
Paris, July 20th, 1915.
DEAREST VIOLET,
I saw a very touching thing the other day in the Madeleine, where
I went to Mass. A woman no longer young, in the heaviest of crape,
came in and sat down and buried her face in her hands. She shook with
suppressed sobs and terrible weeping. Presently there came in another
worshipper, a stranger to her, and sat down by her side. He was a
splendid-looking officer in full-dress uniform--a young man, with
a wedding-ring upon his hand--one of those permissionnaires home,
evidently, for the short eight days that all the officers are given
now--a hiatus between the old war and the new. He bent too, praying;
but the weeping of the woman at his side evidently tore his heart.
Presently she lifted her face and wiped her eyes, and the officer put
his hand on hers. And as I was sitting near, I heard what he said:
"_Pauvre madame, pauvre madame!... Ma mère pleure comme vous._"
She glanced at him, then bent again in prayer. But when she had
finished, before she left her seat, I heard her say to him:
"_Monsieur, j'ai beaucoup prié pour vous. Sachez que vous aves les
prières d'une vieille mère a laquelle ne reste rien au monde._"
He touched her hand again and said:
"Merci, madame. Adieu!"
* * * * *
It was just one of those intensely touching pictures in that dimly
lighted church, full of worshippers, that one can never forget....
IX--STORY OF A LITTLE SOLDIER FROM AFRICA
_To Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Newport._
4, Place du Palais Bourbon,
Paris, Aug., 1915.
DEAREST ANNE,
Wandering about alone, as I have been doing a great deal lately, I have
gone into many of the churches and prayed at the different shrines, and
it is impressive to see the character of those who come in to pray. Men
who can never kneel again; men who sit with bandaged eyes before the
lighted altars, for whom all the visions of the world have been blotted
out for ever; the poor women in their little shawls; women in their
crape veils; the man going to the Front; the man who has come back from
it, never to take an active part in life again; and the women who ask
the Mother of Sorrows to remember theirs....
A very agreeable Abbé dined with me last night. He told me that he was
giving absolution to one dying German boy--only sixteen--on the field,
and he put his hand under the boy's head and lifted it, and the boy,
who was delirious, simply said: "Mama, mama, mama!" And the Abbé said
to me: "It is a very curious thing, but in all the dying appeals I have
ever heard, it is always for the _mother_." That return, perhaps, to
the lost childhood--the call just before going to sleep....
One day when I was giving electricity lately at the Ambulance, a poor
little Zouave hobbled in--he had only one leg left--and held up a
maimed hand for me to treat. He was not a very interesting-looking
specimen--rather sullen and discouraged, I thought--but as I looked at
his frail little body and his disfigured hand, I looked at his breast
too. Three medals were on it--the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre,
and the Médaille Militaire--all a man can get! And he was just a little
soldier of Africa--a nondescript man whose name would only be heard at
other times to be forgotten.
Jacquemin.
"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?_"
_Pour mériter tout cela, parbleu!_ He has one leg only, one hand only,
and he has back of him eight months of hospital and eight months of
horror, for his sufferings have been beyond words.
Jacquemin!
Oh, his name is pretty well known now in a certain Sector!
"_Qu'est-ce que vous aves fait pour mériter tout cela?_"
Three medals across that narrow chest!
Well, alone, on a bad night, in storm and rain, he was a volunteer
patrol. Alone, he brought in four German prisoners. He was a volunteer
for six _patrouilles_ of the gravest danger--not always alone, but
always fetching in prisoners and more prisoners. Bad for the Germans.
He carried his superior officer, wounded, out under fire and saved his
life. Then there was a line of trenches where a hundred and fifty-six
men--they know his name: Jacquemin! Jacquemin with the little mongrel
dog always at his heels--a hundred and fifty-six men had eaten nothing
for four days but the sodden bread left in their haversacks. Jacquemin
filled several wagons full of bread and seating himself on the driver's
seat of the first, he drove in that life-giving line under the fire
of shot and shell, right into the very jaws of death. He brought
sufficient supplies to save the line of trenches, for otherwise they
would have had to evacuate them through starvation, as indeed was the
case with others where this gay little Zouave could not reach. Just
the giving of food to the faint and hungry men whose stern faces were
set against death. That act brought him one of those medals across his
breast--I forget which. Finally, the shot and shell which he had braved
so many times was bound to get him, and with his leg and arm almost
shot away he lay for dead amongst the other slain, and they buried him.
They buried Jacquemin. Fortunately or unfortunately--it depends upon
how he regards a life which he will live through henceforth with only
one leg and only one arm--a little bit of his soldier's coat sprouted
out of the ground. (They don't always bury deep on those fields.) And
his dog saw it and smelled and dug and dug, and whined and cried, until
they came and unburied Jacquemin and brought him back.
He is sitting up there at the Ambulance now, and his little dog is
sometimes in the kitchen and sometimes comes up to the wards.
Jacquemin!
"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?_"
What countless thousands of them have done, all along those
lines--Englishmen and Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Indians,
Australians, Canadians--hearts and souls and bodies offered up
magnificently and valiantly sacrificed for the greatest Cause for which
humanity has ever fought! Jacquemin brought them bread to the fighting
line; and that great fighting line, by its efforts, is giving bread for
ever to the world....
(Hundreds of these wonderful letters, revealing the great soul of this
American woman, have been gathered into her book which forms one of the
most beautiful insights into the "soul of the war."--EDITOR.)
FOOTNOTE:
[3] In speaking of the death of Comte Henry Dadvisard.
"A GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE"--HIS ESCAPE
"_The Inside Story of the German Army_"
_Told by--(His Name Must Be Witheld To Save the Lives of His Relatives
and Himself)_
This narrative is without doubt the greatest story yet told by a
German soldier. It is a startling confession of the inward feelings
of a young German miner in the Kaiser's ranks. Escaping to America
after serving fourteen months, he first told his story to the _New
Yorker Volkszeitung_, the principal organ of the German socialists in
the United States. Believing that all the American people should know
the truth, his experiences have been translated by J. Koettgen and
published in book form by _B. W. Huebsch_, of New York. His stories
are of historical value because he tells how he marched into Belgium
with the first German army of invasion; the crossing of the Meuse;
the Battle of the Marne. He also tells the first German story of
the rout and flight of the Teutonic forces from the Marne--and his
desertion from the "hell" within the German army. In these pages we
can give but ten selected glimpses of the several hundred stories and
scenes which he so graphically describes.
[4] I--STORY OF THE MARCH INTO BELGIUM
At the end of July, 1914, our garrison at Koblenz was feverishly
agitated. Part of our men were seized by an indescribable enthusiasm,
others became subject to a feeling of great depression. The declaration
of war was in the air. I belonged to those who were depressed. For
I was doing my second year of military service and was to leave the
barracks in six weeks' time. Instead of the long wished-for return home
war was facing me....
Our sapper battalion, No. 30, had been in feverish activity five
days before the mobilization; work was being pushed on day and
night.... Moreover, there was the suspicious amiability of the
officers and sergeants, which excluded any doubt that any one might
still have had. Officers who had never before replied to the salute
of a private soldier now did so with the utmost attention. Cigars
and beer were distributed in those days by the officers with great,
uncommon liberality, so that it was not surprising that many soldiers
were scarcely ever sober and did not realize the seriousness of the
situation. But there were also others. There were soldiers who also
in those times of good-humour and the grinning comradeship of officer
and soldier could not forget that in military service they had often
been degraded to the level of brutes, and who now thought with bitter
feelings that an opportunity might perhaps be offered in order to
settle accounts.
The order of mobilization became known on the 1st of August, and the
following day was decided upon as the real day of mobilization. But
without awaiting the arrival of the reserves we left our garrison town
on August 1st. Who was to be our "enemy" we did not know; Russia was
for the present the only country against which war had been declared.
We marched through the streets of the town to the station between
crowds of people numbering many thousands. Flowers were thrown at us
from every window; everybody wanted to shake hands with the departing
soldiers. All the people, even soldiers, were weeping. Many marched
arm in arm with their wife or sweetheart. The music played songs of
leave-taking. People cried and sang at the same time. Entire strangers,
men and women, embraced and kissed each other; men embraced men and
kissed each other. It was a real witches' sabbath of emotion; like a
wild torrent, that emotion carried away the whole assembled humanity.
Nobody, not even the strongest and most determined spirit, could resist
that ebullition of feeling.
But all that was surpassed by the taking leave at the station, which we
reached after a short march. Here final adieus had to be said, here the
separation had to take place. I shall never forget that leave-taking,
however old I may grow to be. Desperately many women clung to their
men; some had to be removed by force. Just as if they had suddenly had
a vision of the fate of their beloved ones, as if they were beholding
the silent graves in foreign lands in which those poor nameless ones
were to be buried, they sought to cling fast to their possession, to
retain what already no longer belonged to them.
Finally that, too, was over. We had entered a train that had been
kept ready, and had made ourselves comfortable in our cattle-trucks.
Darkness had come, and we had no light in our comfortable sixth-class
carriages.
The train moved slowly down the Rhine, it went along without any great
shaking, and some of us were seized by a worn-out feeling after those
days of great excitement. Most of the soldiers lay with their heads on
their knapsacks and slept. Others again tried to pierce the darkness
as if attempting to look into the future; still others drew stealthily
a photo out of their breast-pocket, and only a very small number of us
spent the time by debating our point of destination. Where are we going
to? Well, where? Nobody knew it. At last, after long, infinitely long
hours the train came to a stop. After a night of quiet, slow riding we
were at--Aix-la-Chapelle! At Aix-la-Chapelle! What were we doing at
Aix-la-Chapelle? We did not know, and the officers only shrugged their
shoulders when we asked them.
After a short interval the journey proceeded, and on the evening of the
2nd of August we reached a farm in the neighbourhood of the German and
Belgian frontier, near Herbesthal. Here our company was quartered in
a barn. Nobody knew what our business was at the Belgian frontier. In
the afternoon of the 3rd of August reservists arrived, and our company
was brought to its war strength. We had still no idea concerning the
purpose of our being sent to the Belgian frontier, and that evening
we lay down on our bed of straw with a forced tranquillity of mind.
Something was sure to happen soon, to deliver us from that oppressive
uncertainty. How few of us thought that for many it would be the last
night to spend on German soil!...
II--STORY OF THE FIRST ALARM TO BATTLE
At 1 o'clock in the morning an alarm aroused us again, and the captain
honoured us with an address. He told us we were at war with Belgium,
that we should acquit ourselves as brave soldiers, earn iron crosses,
and do honour to our German name....
The soldier is told, "The Belgian is your enemy," and he has to believe
it. The soldier, the workman in uniform, had not known till then who
was his enemy. If they had told us, "The Hollander is your enemy," we
would have believed that, too; we would have been compelled to believe
it, and would have shot him by order. We, the "German citizens in
uniform," must not have an opinion of our own, must have no thoughts
of our own, for they give us our enemy and our friend according to
requirements, according to the requirements of their own interests. The
Frenchman, the Belgian, the Italian, is your enemy. Never mind, shoot
as we order, and do not bother your head about it....
About ten minutes we might have lain in the grass when we suddenly
heard rifle shots in front of us. Electrified, all of us jumped up and
hastened to our rifles. Then the firing of rifles that was going on
at a distance of about a mile or a mile and a half began steadily to
increase in volume. We set in motion immediately....
Though I was aware that we should be in the firing line within half an
hour, I endeavoured to convince myself that our participation in the
fight would no longer be necessary. I clung obstinately, nay, almost
convulsively to every idea that could strengthen that hope or give me
consolation. That not every bullet finds its billet; that, as we had
been told, most wounds in modern wars were afflicted by grazing shots
which caused slight flesh-wounds; those were some of the reiterated
self-deceptions indulged in against my better knowledge. And they
proved effective. It was not only that they made me in fact feel more
easy; deeply engaged in those thoughts I had scarcely observed that we
were already quite near the firing line....
We were lying flat on the ground, and fired in the direction indicated
to us as fast as our rifles would allow. So far we had not seen our
opponents. That, it seemed, was too little interesting to some of our
soldiers; so they rose partly, and fired in a kneeling position. Two
men of my company had to pay for their curiosity with their lives.
Almost at one and the same time they were shot through the head. The
first victim of our group fell down forward without uttering a sound;
the second threw up his arms and fell on his back. Both of them were
dead instantly.
Who could describe the feelings that overcome a man in the first hail
of bullets he is in? When we were leaping forward to reach the firing
line I felt no longer any fear and seemed only to try to reach the line
as quickly as possible. But when looking at the first dead man I was
seized by a terrible horror. For minutes I was perfectly stupefied, had
completely lost command over myself and was absolutely incapable to
think or act. I pressed my face and hands firmly against the ground,
and then suddenly I was seized by an irrepressible excitement, took
hold of my gun, and began to fire away blindly. Little after little I
quieted down again somewhat, nay, I became almost quite confident as if
everything was normal. Suddenly I found myself content with myself and
my surroundings, and when a little later the whole line was commanded,
"Leap forward! March, march!" I ran forward demented like the others,
as if things could not be other than what they were....
It was a hand to hand fight; every kind of weapon had to be employed;
the opponent was attacked with the butt-end of the rifle, the knife,
the fist, and the teeth. One of my best friends fought with a gigantic
Belgian; both had lost their rifles. They were pummeling each other
with their fists. I had just finished with a Belgian who was about
twenty-two years of age, and was going to assist my friend, as the
Herculean Belgian was so much stronger than he. Suddenly my friend
succeeded with a lightning motion in biting the Belgian in the chin. He
bit so deeply that he tore away a piece of flesh with his teeth. The
pain the Belgian felt must have been immense, for he let go his hold
and ran off screaming with terrible pain.
All that happened in seconds. The blood of the Belgian ran out of my
friend's mouth; he was seized by a horrible nausea, an indescribable
terror, the taste of the warm blood nearly drove him insane. That
young, gay, lively fellow of twenty-four had been cheated out of his
youth in that night. He used to be the jolliest among us; after that we
could never induce him even to smile.
Whilst fighting during the night I came for the first time in touch
with the butt-end of a Belgian rifle. I had a hand to hand fight with a
Belgian when another one from behind hit me with his rifle on the head
with such force that it drove my head into the helmet up to my ears.
I experienced a terrific pain all over my head, doubled up, and lost
consciousness. When I revived I found myself with a bandaged head in a
barn among other wounded.
I had not been severely wounded, but I felt as if my head was double
its normal size, and there was a noise in my ears as of the wheels of
an express engine....
We were quite hungry and ate the tinned soup with the heartiest of
appetites. Many of our soldiers were sitting with their dinner-pails
on the dead horses that were lying about, and were eating with such
pleasure and heartiness as if they were home at mother's. Nor did some
corpses in the neighbourhood of our improvised camp disturb us. There
was only a lack of water and after having eaten thirst began to torment
us.
We continued our march in the scorching midday sun; dust was covering
our uniforms and skin to the depth of almost an inch. We tried in vain
to be jolly, but thirst tormented us more and more, and we became
weaker and weaker from one quarter of an hour to another. Many in our
ranks fell down exhausted....
III--STORY OF THE POISONED WELLS
Finally, towards four o'clock, we saw a village in front of us; we
began at once to march at a much brisker pace. Among other things we
saw a farm-cart on which were several civilian prisoners, apparently
snipers. There was also a Catholic priest among them who had, like the
others, his hands tied behind his back with a rope. Curiosity prompted
us to enquire what he had been up to, and we heard that he had incited
the farmers of the village to poison the water.
We soon reached the village and the first well at which we hoped
to quench our thirst thoroughly. But that was no easy matter, for
a military guard had been placed before it who scared us off with
the warning, "Poisoned"! Disappointed and terribly embittered the
soldiers, half dead with thirst, gnashed their teeth; they hurried to
the next well, but everywhere the same devilish thing occurred--the
guard preventing them from drinking. In a square, in the middle of the
village, there was a large village well which sent, through two tubes,
water as clear as crystal into a large trough. Five soldiers were
guarding it and had to watch that nobody drank of the poisoned water. I
was just going to march past it with my pal when suddenly the second,
larger portion of our company rushed like madmen to the well. The
guards were carried away by the rush, and every one now began to drink
the water with the avidity of an animal. All quenched their thirst, and
not one of us became ill or died. We heard later on that the priest had
to pay for it with his death....
In every army one finds men with the disposition of barbarians.
The many millions of inhabitants in Germany or France are not all
civilized people, much as we like to convince ourselves of the
contrary. Compulsory military service in those countries forces all
without distinction into the army, men and monsters. I have often
bitterly resented the wrong one did to our army in calling us all
barbarians only because among us--as, naturally also among the French
and English--there were to be found elements that really ought to be
in the penitentiary. I will only cite one example of how we soldiers
ourselves punished a wretch whom we caught committing a crime.
One evening--it was dark already--we reached a small village to the
east of the town of Bertrix, and there, too, found "poisoned" water.
We halted in the middle of the village. I was standing before a house
with a low window, through which one could see the interior. In the
miserable poverty-stricken working man's dwelling we observed a woman
who clung to her children as if afraid they would be torn from her.
Though we felt very bitter on account of the want of water, every
one of us would have liked to help the poor woman. Some of us were
just going to sacrifice our little store of victuals and to say a few
comforting words to the woman, when all at once a stone as big as a
fist was thrown through the window-pane into the room and hurt a little
girl in the right hand. There were sincere cries of indignation, but
at the same moment twenty hands at least laid hold of the wretch, a
reservist of our company, and gave him such a hiding as to make him
almost unconscious. If officers and other men had not interfered the
fellow would have been lynched there and then. He was to be placed
before a court-martial later on, but it never came to that. He was
drowned in the river at the battle of the Meuse. Many soldiers believed
he drowned himself, because he was not only shunned by his fellow
soldiers, but was also openly despised by them....
IV--STORY OF THE BELGIAN SNIPERS
We had to proceed, and soon reached the town of Bertrix. Some few
houses to the left and right of the road were burning fiercely; we soon
got to know that they had been set alight because soldiers marching
past were said to have been shot at from those houses. Before one of
these houses a man and his wife and their son, a boy of 15 or 16, lay
half burnt to cinders; all had been covered with straw. Three more
civilians lay dead in the same street.
We had marched past some more houses when all at once shots rang out;
they had been shooting from some house, and four of our soldiers had
been wounded. For a short while there was confusion. The house from
which the shots must have come was soon surrounded, and hand grenades
were thrown through all the windows into the interior. In an instant
all the rooms were in flames. The exploding hand grenades caused such
an enormous air pressure that all the doors were blown from their
hinges and the inner walls torn to shreds. Almost at the same time,
five men in civilian clothes rushed into the street and asked for
quarter with uplifted hands. They were seized immediately and taken
to the officers, who formed themselves into a tribunal within a few
minutes. Ten minutes later sentence had already been executed; five
strong men lay on the ground, blindfolded and their bodies riddled by
bullets.
Six of us had in each of the five cases to execute the sentence, and
unfortunately I, too, belonged to those thirty men. The condemned man
whom my party of six had to shoot was a tall, lean man, about forty
years of age. He did not wince for a moment when they blindfolded him.
In a garden of a house nearby he was placed with his back against the
house, and after our captain had told us that it was our duty to aim
well so as to end the tragedy quickly, we took up our position six
paces from the condemned one. The sergeant commanding us had told us
before to shoot the condemned man through the chest. We then formed
two lines, one behind the other. The command was given to load and
secure, and we pushed five cartridges into the rifle. Then the command
rang out, "Get ready!" The first line knelt, the second stood up. We
held our rifles in such a position that the barrel pointed in front of
us whilst the butt-end rested somewhere near the hip. At the command,
"Aim!" we slowly brought our rifles into shooting position, grasped
them firmly, pressed the plate of the butt-end against the shoulder
and, with our cheek on the butt-end, we clung convulsively to the neck
of the rifle. Our right forefinger was on the trigger, the sergeant
gave us about half a minute for aiming before commanding, "Fire!"
Even to-day I cannot say whether our victim fell dead on the spot or
how many of the six bullets hit him....
V--STORY OF MURDEROUS FIGHTS IN THE NIGHT
After a short march we engaged the French to the northeast of Donchéry.
On this side of the Meuse the enemy had only his rear-guard, whose
task was to cover the crossing of the main French armies, a movement
which was almost exclusively effected at Sedan and Donchéry. We stuck
close to the heels of our opponents, who did not retreat completely
till darkness began to fall. The few bridges left did not allow him to
withdraw his forces altogether as quickly as his interest demanded.
Thus it came about that an uncommonly murderous nocturnal street
fight took place in Donchéry which was burning at every corner. The
French fought with immense energy; an awful slaughter was the result.
Man against man! That "man against man!" is the most terrible thing
I have experienced in war. Nobody can tell afterwards how many he
has killed. You have gripped your opponent, who is sometimes weaker,
sometimes stronger than yourself. In the light of the burning houses
you observe that the white of his eyes has turned red; his mouth is
covered with a thick froth. With head uncovered, with disheveled hair,
the uniform unbuttoned and mostly ragged, you stab, hew, scratch, bite
and strike about you like a wild animal. It means life or death. You
fight for your life. No quarter is given. You only hear the gasping,
groaning, jerky breathing. You only think of your own life, of death,
of home. In feverish haste, as in a whirlwind, old memories are rushing
through your mind. Yet you get more excited from minute to minute, for
exhaustion tries to master you; but that must not be--not now! And
again the fight is renewed; again there is hewing, stabbing, biting.
Without rifle, without any weapon in a life and death struggle. You or
I. I? I?--Never! you! The exertion becomes superhuman. Now a thrust,
a vicious bite, and you are the victor. Victor for the moment, for
already the next man, who has just finished off one of your mates, is
upon you--. You suddenly remember that you have a dagger about you.
After a hasty fumbling you find it in the prescribed place. A swift
movement and the dagger buries itself deeply in the body of the other
man.
Onward! onward! new enemies are coming up, real enemies. How clearly
the thought suddenly flashes on you that that man is your enemy, that
he is seeking to take your life, that he bites, strikes, and scratches,
tries to force you down and plant his dagger in your heart. Again you
use your dagger. Thank heavens! He is down. Saved!-- Still, you must
have that dagger back! You pull it out of his chest. A jet of warm
blood rushes out of the gaping wound and strikes your face. Human
blood, warm human blood! You shake yourself, horror strikes you for
only a few seconds. The next one approaches; again you have to defend
your skin. Again and again the mad murdering is repeated, all night
long--....
VI--STORY OF THE MEN WHO DIE
Many of my mates envied the dead soldiers and wished to be in their
place in order to be at least through with all their misery. Yet all of
us were afraid of dying--afraid of dying, be it noted, not of death.
All of us often longed for death, but we were horrified at the slow
dying lasting hours which is the rule on the battlefield, that process
which makes the wounded, abandoned soldier die piecemeal. I have
witnessed the death of hundreds of young men in their prime, but I know
of none among them who died willingly. A young sapper of the name of
Kellner, whose home was at Cologne, had his whole abdomen ripped open
by a shell splinter. Maddened by pain he begged me to assure him that
he would not have to die. Of course, I assured him that his wounds were
by no means severe and that the doctor would be there immediately to
help him. My words comforted him. He died ten minutes later....
We common soldiers were here handling the dead and wounded as if we had
never done anything else, and yet in our civilian lives most of us had
an abhorrence and fear of the dead and the horribly mangled. War is a
hard schoolmaster who bends and reshapes his pupils.
One section was busy with digging a common grave for the dead. We took
away the papers and valuables of the dead, took possession of the
eatable and drinkable stores to be found in the saddle bags attached
to the horses and, when the grave was ready, we began to place the
dead bodies in it. They were laid close together in order to utilize
fully the available space. I, too, had been ordered to "bring in"
the dead. The bottom of the grave was large enough for twenty-three
bodies if the space was well utilized. When two layers of twenty-three
had already been buried a sergeant of the artillery, who was standing
near, observed that one of the "dead" was still alive. He had seen the
"corpse" move the fingers of his right hand. On closer examination it
turned out that we came near burying a living man, for after an attempt
lasting two hours we succeeded in restoring him to consciousness. The
officer of the infantry who supervised the work now turned to the two
soldiers charged with getting the corpses ready and asked them whether
they were sure that all the men buried were really dead.
"Yes," the two replied, "we suppose they are all dead." That seemed
to be quite sufficient for that humane officer, for he ordered the
interments to proceed. Nobody doubted that there were several more
among the 138 men whom we alone buried in one grave (two other, still
bigger, graves had been dug by different burial parties) from whose
bodies life had not entirely flown....
We were as merry as boys and as noisy as street urchins. "Oh, what a
joy to be a soldier lad!"--that song rang out, subdued at first, then
louder and louder. It died away quickly enough as one after the other
laid down his tired head. We slept like the dead.
A soldier in war never knows the date or day of the week. One day is
like another. Whether it is Saturday, Thursday or Sunday, it means
always the same routine of murdering. "Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy!" "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But
the seventh day--thou shalt not do any work." These, to our Christian
rulers, are empty phrases. "Six days shalt thou murder and on the
seventh day, too."
VII--STORY OF THE "MISSING" OFFICERS
However, not all the soldiers approved of that senseless, that criminal
murdering. Some of the "gentlemen" who had ordered us to massacre our
French comrades were killed "by mistake" in the darkness of the night,
by their own people, of course. Such "mistakes" repeat themselves
almost daily, and if I keep silence with regard to many such mistakes
which I could relate, giving the exact name and place, the reader will
know why.
During that night it was a captain and first lieutenant who met this
fate. An infantryman who was serving his second year stabbed the
captain through the stomach with his bayonet, and almost at the same
time the first lieutenant got a stab in the back. Both men were dead in
a few minutes. Those that did the deeds showed not the slightest signs
of repentance, and not one of us felt inclined to reproach them; on
the contrary, every one knew that despicable, brutal murderers had met
their doom.
In this connection I must mention a certain incident which necessitates
my jumping a little ahead of events. When on the following day I
conversed with a mate from my company and asked him for the loan of
his pocket knife he drew from his pocket three cartridges besides his
knife. I was surprised to find him carrying cartridges in his trousers'
pockets and asked him whether he had no room for them in his cartridge
case. "There's room enough," he replied, "but those three are meant
for a particular purpose; there's a name inscribed on each of them."
Some time after--we had meanwhile become fast friends--I inquired again
after the three bullets. He had one of them left. I reflected and
remembered two sergeants who had treated us like brutes in times of
peace, whom we had hated as one could only hate slave-drivers. They had
found their grave in French soil....
A company of the Hessian landwehr, all of them old soldiers, were
marching past with sore feet and drooping heads. They had probably
marched for a long while. Officers were attempting to liven them
up. They were to sing a song, but the Hessians, fond of singing and
good-natured as they certainly are known to be, were by no means in
a mood to sing. "I tell you to sing, you swine!" the officer cried,
and the pitifully helpless-looking "swine" endeavored to obey the
command. Here and there a thin voice from the ranks of the overtired
men could be heard to sing, "_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
über alles in der Welt_." With sore feet and broken energy, full
of disgust with their "glorious" trade of warriors, they sang that
symphony of supergermanism that sounded then like blasphemy, nay, like
a travesty--"_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der
Welt_." ...
VIII--STORY OF THE SACKING OF SUIPPES
I have never in war witnessed a greater general pillaging than here in
Suippes. It was plain that we had to live and had to have food. The
inhabitants and storekeepers having fled, it was often impossible to
pay for the things one needed. Men simply went into some store, put
on socks and underwear, and left their old things; they then went to
some other store, took the food they fancied, and hied themselves to a
wine-cellar to provide themselves to their hearts' content.
The finest and largest stores--Suippes supplied a large tract
of country and had comparatively extensive stores of all
descriptions--were empty shells in a few hours.
One of our sappers had for weeks carried about with him a pair of
handsome boots for his fiancée and then had them sent to her in two
parcels. However, the field post did not guarantee delivery; and thus
the war bride got the left boot, and not the right one....
The occupant of one house was evidently a young bride, for the various
pieces of the trousseau, trimmed with dainty blue ribbons, could be
seen in the wardrobes in a painfully spick and span condition. All
the wardrobes were unlocked. We did not touch a thing. We were again
reminded of the cruelty of war. Millions it turned into beggars in
one night; the fondest hopes and desires were destroyed. When, the
next morning, we entered the house again, driven by a presentiment of
misfortune, we found everything completely destroyed. Real barbarians
had been raging here, who had lost that thin varnish with which
civilization covers the brute in man. The whole trousseau of the young
bride had been dragged from the shelves and was still partly covering
the floor. Portraits, photographs, looking-glasses, all lay broken
on the floor. Three of us had entered the room, and all three of us
clenched our fists in helpless rage....
When a man is accustomed to step over corpses with a cold smile on
his lips, when he has to face death every minute day and night, he
gradually loses that finer feeling for human things and humanity. Thus
it must not surprise one that soldiers could laugh and joke in the
midst of awful devastation, that they brought wine to a concert room in
which there was a piano and an electric organ, and had a joyful time
with music and wine. They drank till they were unconscious; they drank
with sergeants and corporals, pledging "brotherhood"; and they rolled
arm in arm through the streets with their new "comrades."...
IX--STORY OF THE TRAGEDY OF THE MARNE
_At the Marne--in the maw of death._ It was dark, and rained. From all
directions one heard in the darkness the wounded calling, crying, and
moaning. The wounded we had with us were likewise moaning and crying.
All wanted to have their wounds dressed, but we had no more bandages.
We tore off pieces of our dirty shirts and placed the rags on those
sickening wounds. Men were dying one after the other. There were no
doctors, no bandages; we had nothing whatever. You had to help the
wounded and keep the French off at the same time. It was an unbearable,
impossible state of things. It rained harder and harder. We were wet
to our skins. We fired blindly into the darkness. The rolling fire of
rifles increased, then died away, then increased again. We sappers were
placed among the infantry. My neighbor gave me a dig in the ribs. "I
say," he called out.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Who are you?"
"A sapper."
"Come here," he hissed. "It gives you an uncanny feeling to be alone in
this hell of a night. Why are you here too?--They'll soon come again,
those over there; then there'll be fine fun again. Do you hear the
others cry?"
He laughed. Suddenly he began again: "I always shoot at those until
they leave off crying--that's great fun."
Again he laughed, that time more shrilly than before.
I knew what was the matter. He had become insane. A man passed with
ammunition. I begged him to go at once and fetch the section leader.
The leader, a lieutenant of the infantry, came up. I went to meet him
and told him that my neighbor was continually firing at the wounded,
was talking nonsense, and was probably insane. The lieutenant placed
himself between us. "Can you see anything?" he asked the other man.
"What? See? No; but I hear them moaning and crying, and as soon as I
hit one--well, he is quiet, he goes to sleep--" The lieutenant nodded
at me. He took the gun away from the man. But the latter snatched it
quickly away again and jumped out of the trench. From there he fired
into the crowd of wounded men until, a few seconds after, he dropped
down riddled by several bullets.
(Here the soldier gives a wonderful description of the rout and flight
from the Battle of the Marne which is too long to be included in this
collection, but which the reader will find complete, in his book: "A
Deserter's War Experiences."--EDITOR.)
X--STORY OF A FURLOUGH--AND ESCAPE
It was not until September that I managed to obtain furlough at the
request of my relations, and I left for home with a resolve that at
times seemed to me impossible to execute. All went well until I got to
Diedenhofen.
As far as that station the railroads are operated by the army
authorities. At Diedenhofen they are taken over by the Imperial
Railroads of Alsace-Lorraine and the Prusso-Hessian State Railroads. So
I had to change, and got on a train that went to Saarbruecken. I had
scarcely taken a seat in a compartment in my dirty and ragged uniform
when a conductor came along to inspect the tickets. Of course, I had
no ticket; I had only a furlough certificate and a pass which had been
handed to me at the field railroad depot of Chatel. The conductor
looked at the papers and asked me again for my ticket. I drew his
attention to my pass. "That is only good for the territory of the war
operations," he said; "you are now traveling on a state railroad and
have to buy a ticket."
I told him that I should not buy a ticket, and asked him to inform
the station manager. "You," I told him, "only act according to
instructions. I am not angry with you for asking of me what I shall do
under no circumstances." He went off and came back with the manager.
The latter also inspected my papers and told me I had to pay for the
journey.
"I have no means for that purpose," I told him. "For these last three
years I have been in these clothes" (I pointed to my uniform), "and for
three years I have therefore been without any income. Whence am I to
get the money to pay for this journey?"
"If you have no money for traveling you can't take furlough." I
thought to myself that if they took me deep into France they were in
conscience bound to take me back to where they had fetched me. Was
I to be a soldier for three years and fight for the Fatherland for
more than a year only to find that now they refused the free use of
their railroads to a ragged soldier? I explained that I was not going
to pay, that I could not save the fare from the few pfennigs' pay. I
refused explicitly to pay a soldier's journey with my private money,
even if--as was the case here--that soldier was myself. Finally I told
him, "I must request you to inform the military railroad commander; the
depot command attends to soldiers, not you." He sent me a furious look
through his horn spectacles and disappeared. Two civilians were sitting
in the same compartment with me; they thought it an unheard-of thing
that a soldier coming from the front should be asked for his fare.
Presently the depot commander came up with a sergeant. He demanded to
see my furlough certificate, pay books, and all my other papers.
"Have you any money?"
"No."
"Where do you come from?"
"From Chatel in the Argonnes."
"How long were you at the front?"
"In the fourteenth month."
"Been wounded?"
"No."
"Have you no money at all?"
"No; you don't want money at the front."
"The fare must be paid. If you can't, the company must pay. Please sign
this paper."
I signed it without looking at it. It was all one to me what I signed,
as long as they left me alone. Then the sergeant came back.
"You can not travel in that compartment; you must also not converse
with travelers. You have to take the first carriage marked 'Only for
the military.' Get into that."
"I see," I observed; "in the dogs' compartment."
He turned round again and said, "Cut out those remarks."
The train started, and I arrived safely home. After the first hours
of meeting all at home again had passed I found myself provided with
faultless underwear and had taken the urgently needed bath. Once more I
could put on the civilian dress I had missed for so long a time. All of
it appeared strange to me. I began to think. Under no conditions was I
going to return to the front. But I did not know how I should succeed
in getting across the frontier. I could choose between two countries
only--Switzerland and Holland. It was no use going to Switzerland, for
that country was surrounded by belligerent states, and it needed only
a little spark to bring Switzerland into the war, and then there would
be no loophole for me. There was only the nearest country left for me
to choose--Holland. But how was I to get there? There was the rub. I
concocted a thousand plans and discarded them again. Nobody, not even
my relatives, must know about it.
(How this German soldier fled from the war and escaped to America is
told in his book: "A German Deserter's War Experiences;"--Copyright,
1917, B. W. Huebsch.)
FOOTNOTE:
[4] All numbers relate to the stories herein told--not to the chapters
in the book.
"THE SOUL OF THE WAR"--TALES OF THE HEROIC FRENCH
_Revelations of a War Correspondent_
_Told by Philip Gibbs, Special Correspondent for the "London Daily
Chronicle"_
The eye-witness stories of this gifted English author lay bare the
soul of the Great War. He tells of the human and psychological side
of warfare as he has seen it on the battle field under heavy shell
fire, in bombarded towns, in field hospitals and amid great movements
of troops. He reveals the throbbing heart of the ghastly brute force
that mangles the body and tortures the mind of heroic men. The author
says in his conclusion: "More passionate than any other emotion that
has stirred man through life is my conviction that any man that has
seen these things, if he has ... any human pity, should dedicate his
head and heart to the sacred duty of preventing another war like
this." The stories herein given are by permission of his publishers,
_Robert M. McBride and Company_ (Copyright 1915), and are taken from
but one chapter of this notable book, in which he relates nearly a
thousand anecdotes.
[5] I--STORY OF THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE
The Germans, however great their army, could never have captured the
soul of Paris....
When in the first days of the war I saw the soldiers of France on
their way to the front, I had even then a conviction that the fighting
qualities of the nation had not degenerated in forty-four years of
peace.... Afterwards, during many months as a wanderer in this war, I
came to know the French soldier with the intimacy of long conversations
to the sound of guns, in the first line of trenches facing the enemy,
in hospitals, where he spoke quietly while comrades snored themselves
to death, in villages smashed to pieces by shell-fire, in troop trains
overcrowded with wounded, in woods and fields pockmarked by the holes
of "marmites," and in the restaurants of Paris and provincial towns
where, with an empty sleeve or one trouser-leg dangling beneath the
tablecloth, he told me his experiences of war with a candor in which
there was no concealment of truth; and out of all these friendships
and revelations of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands
before my mind in heroic colors....
He does not like death--he dreads the thought of it--but without
questioning his soul he springs forward to save this mother-country of
his and dies upon her bosom with a cry of "Vive la France!"
The French soldier ... needs feminine consolation, and all his ideals
and his yearnings and his self-pity are intimately associated with the
love of women, and especially of one woman--his mother. When Napoleon,
in the island of St. Helena, used to talk about the glories of his
victorious years, and then brooded over the tragedy of his overthrow so
that all his soul was clouded with despair, he used to rouse himself
after the silence which followed those hours of self-analysis and say,
"Let us talk about women--and love." Always it is the feminine spirit
in which a Frenchman bathes his wounds. One small incident I saw a year
or two ago gave me the clue to this quality in the French character.
It was when Védrines, the famous airman, was beaten by only a few
minutes in the flight round England. Capitaine Conneau--"Beaumont,"
as he called himself--had outraced his rival and waited, with French
gallantry, to shake the hand of the adversary he had defeated on
untiring wings. A great crowd of smart men and women waited also at
Brooklands to cheer the second in the race, who in England is always
more popular than the prize-winner. But when Védrines came to earth out
of a blue sky he was savage and bitter. The loss of the prize-money was
a great tragedy to this mechanic who had staked all his ambition on
the flight. He shouted out harsh words to those who came to cheer him,
and shook them off violently when they tried to clap him on the back.
He was savagely angry. Then suddenly something seemed to break in his
spirit, and his face quivered.
"Is there any woman to embrace me?" he asked. Out of the crowd came a
pretty Frenchwoman and, understanding the man, though she had not met
him before, she held out her arms to him and raised her face.
"Allons-donc, mon vieux!" she said.
The man put his arms about her and kissed her, while tears streamed
down his face, covered in sweat and dust. He was comforted, like a
boy who had hurt himself, in his mother's arms. It was a queer little
episode--utterly impossible in the imagination of an Englishman--but a
natural thing in France.
So when a Frenchman lies dying, almost unconscious before the last
breath, it is always a woman's name that he cries out, or whispers,
though not always the name of his wife or mistress. One word is heard
again and again in the hospital wards, where the _poilus_ lie, those
bearded fellows, so strong when they went out to the war, but now so
weak and helpless before death.
"Maman! Maman!"
It is to the bosom of motherhood that the spirit of the Frenchman goes
in that last hour.
"Oh, my dear little mamma," writes a young lieutenant of artillery, "it
would be nice to be in my own room again, where your picture hangs
over my bed looking down on the white pillows upon which you used to
make the sign of the Cross before I went to sleep. I often try to dream
myself into that bedroom again, but the cold is too intense for dreams,
and another shell comes shrieking overhead. War is nothing but misery,
after all."
Yet if the English reader imagines that because this thread of
sentiment runs through the character of France there is a softness in
the qualities of French soldiers, he does not know the truth. Those men
whom I saw at the front and behind the fighting lines were as hard in
moral and spiritual strength as in physical endurance....
II--STORY OF THE FIGHTERS FROM ARGONNE AND LORRAINE
The slopes of Hartmansweilerkopf were already washed by waves of blood
which surged round it for nine months and more, until its final capture
by the French. St. Mihiel and Les Eparges and the triangle which the
Germans had wedged between the French lines were a shambles before the
leaves had fallen from the autumn trees in the first year of war. In
the country of the Argonne men fought like wolves and began a guerrilla
warfare with smaller bodies of men, fighting from wood to wood, from
village to village, the forces on each side being scattered over a wide
area in advance of their main lines. Then they dug themselves into
trenches from which they came out at night, creeping up to each other's
lines, flinging themselves upon each other with bayonets and butt-ends,
killing each other as beasts kill, without pity and in the mad rage of
terror which is the fiercest kind of courage.
In Lorraine the tide of war ebbed and flowed over the same tracts of
ground, and neither side picked up its dead or its wounded. Men lay
there alive for days and nights, bleeding slowly to death. The hot sun
glared down upon them and made them mad with thirst. Some of them lay
there for as long as three weeks, still alive, with gangrened limbs in
which lice crawled, so that they stank abominably.
"I cannot tell you all the things I saw," said one of the young
soldiers who talked to me on his way back from Lorraine. He had a queer
look in his eyes when he spoke those words which he tried to hide
from me by turning his head away. But he told me how the fields were
littered with dead, decomposing and swarmed with flies, lying there
in huddled postures, yet some of them so placed that their fixed eyes
seemed to be staring at the corpses near them. And he told me how on
the night he had his own wound French and German soldiers not yet dead
talked together by the light of the moon, which shed its pale light
upon all those prostrate men, making their faces look very white. He
heard the murmurs of voices about him, and the groans of the dying,
rising to hideous anguish as men were tortured by ghastly wounds and
broken limbs. In that night enmity was forgotten by those who had
fought like beasts and now lay together. A French soldier gave his
water-bottle to a German officer who was crying out with thirst. The
German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of the man who had been
his enemy. "There will be no war on the other side," he said.
Another Frenchman--who came from Montmartre--found lying within a yard
of him a Luxembourgeois whom he had known as his _chasseur_ in a big
hotel in Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. "It
is stupid," he said, "this war. You and I were happy when we were good
friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight each other?"
He died with his arms round the neck of the soldier who told me the
story, unashamed of his own tears.
Round this man's neck also were clasped the arms of a German officer
when a week previously the French _piou-piou_ went across the field of
a battle--one of the innumerable skirmishes--which had been fought and
won four days before another French retirement. The young German had
had both legs broken by a shell, and was wounded in other places. He
had strength enough to groan piteously, but when my friend lifted him
up death was near to him.
"He was all rotten," said the soldier, "and there came such a terrible
stench from him that I nearly dropped him, and vomited as I carried him
along."
I learned something of the psychology of the French soldier from this
young infantryman with whom I traveled in a train full of wounded soon
after that night in Lorraine, when the moon had looked down on the
field of the dead and dying in which he lay with a broken leg. He had
passed through a great ordeal, so that his nerves were still torn and
quivering, and I think he was afraid of going mad at the memory of the
things he had seen and suffered, because he tried to compel himself to
talk of trivial things, such as the beauty of the flowers growing on
the railway banks and the different badges on English uniforms. But
suddenly he would go back to the tale of his fighting in Lorraine and
resume a long and rapid monologue in which little pictures of horror
flashed after each other as though his brain were a cinematograph
recording some melodrama. Queer bits of philosophy jerked out between
this narrative. "This war is only endurable because it is for a final
peace in Europe." "Men will refuse to suffer these things again. It is
the end of militarism." "If I thought that a child of mine would have
to go through all that I have suffered during these last weeks, I would
strangle him in his cradle to save him from it."
Sometimes he spoke of France with a kind of religion in his eyes.
"Of course, I am ready to die for France. She can demand my life as a
right. I belong to her and she can do with me what she likes. It's my
duty to fight in her defense, and although I tell you all the worst of
war, Monsieur, I do not mean that I am not glad to have done my part.
In a few weeks this wound of mine will be healed and I shall go back,
for the sake of France, to that Hell again. It is Hell, _quand même_!"
III--STORIES OF THE FRENCH ZOUAVES
Some of the letters from French soldiers, scrawled in the squalor
of the trenches by men caked in filth and mud, are human documents
in which they reveal themselves with extraordinary intimacy, and in
which they put the whole truth, not disguising their terror or their
blood-lust in the savage madness of a bayonet charge, or the heartache
which comes to them when they think of the woman they love, or the
queer little emotions and sentiments which come to them in the grim
business of war....
"I send this letter," writes a young Zouave, "as I sit huddled under
an earth-heap at twenty yards from a German trench, less to be envied
than a rabbit in its burrow, because when the hunter is far away it
can come out and feed at pleasure. You who live through the same
agonies, old friend, must learn and rejoice that I have been promoted
adjutant on the night of November 13 on the banks of the Yser. There
were seventy men out of 250--the rest of the company sleep forever
round that ferryman's house which the papers have made famous.... What
moral sufferings I have endured! We have now been brought to the south
of Ypres and continue this depressing life in advanced trenches. Not
a quarter of an hour's respite; shells, shrapnels, bombs and bullets
fall around us continuously. How courage has changed with this modern
war! The hero of olden times was of a special type, who put on a fine
poise and played up to the gallery because he fought before admiring
spectators. Now, apart from our night attacks, always murderous, in
which courage is not to be seen, because one can hardly discern one's
neighbour in the darkness, our valour consists in a perfect stoicism.
Just now I had a fellow killed before a loophole. His comrades dragged
him away, and with perfect quietude replaced the man who is eternally
out of action. Isn't that strange? Isn't it courage to get the brains
of one's comrade full in the face, and then to stand on guard in the
same place while suffering the extremes of cold and dampness?... On the
night of the 13th I commanded a section of corps which a mitrailleuse
had raked. I had the luck to escape, and I shouted to these poor devils
to make a last assault. Then I saw what had happened and found myself
with a broken rifle and a uniform in rags and tatters. My commandant
spoke to me that night, and said: 'You had better change those clothes.
You can put on an adjutant's stripes.'"...
"The greater number of the bodies," writes a soldier, "still lie
between the trenches, and we have been unable to withdraw them. We can
see them always, in frightful quantity, some of them intact, others
torn to bits by the shells which continue to fall upon them. The stench
of this corruption floats down upon us with foul odours. Bits of their
rotting carcasses are flung into our faces and over our heads as new
shells burst and scatter them. It is like living in a charnel house
where devils are at play flinging dead men's flesh at living men, with
fiendish mockery. The smell of this corruption taints our food, and
taints our very souls, so that we are spiritually and physically sick.
That is war!"
"This horrible game of war," writes another man, "goes on passionately
in our corner. In seventy-four days we have 'progressed' about 1200
yards. That tells you everything. Ground is gained, so to speak, by the
inch, and we all know now how much it costs to get back a bit of free
France."
Along the French lines Death did not rest from his harvesting whatever
the weather, and although for months there was no general advance on
either side, not a day passed without new work for the surgeons, the
stretcher-bearers, and the grave-diggers. One incident is typical of a
hospital scene near the front. It was told in a letter from a hospital
nurse to a friend in Paris.
"About midday we received a wounded general, whom we made as
comfortable as possible in a little room. Although he suffered
terribly, he would submit to no special care, and only thought of the
comfort of two of his officers. By an extraordinary chance a soldier
of his own regiment was brought in a few moments later. Joy of the
general, who wanted to learn at once what had happened to his children.
He asked to see the soldier immediately:
"'Tell me--the commandant?'
"'Dead, mon général.'
"'And the captain?'
"'Dead, mon général.'
"Four times questions were asked, and four times the soldier, whose
voice became lower, made his answer of death. Then the general lowered
his head and asked no more. We saw the tears running down his scarred
old face, and we crept out of the room on tiptoe."
IV--STORY OF THE GHASTLY SCENES IN FRANCE
In spite of all this tragedy, the French soldier into whose soul
it sank, and who will never forget, wrote home with a gaiety which
gleamed through the sadness of his memories. There was a new series
of "Lettres de mon moulin" from a young officer of artillery keeping
guard in an old mill-house in an important position at the front. They
were addressed to his "dearest mamma," and, thoughtful of all the
pretty hands which had been knitting garments for him, he described his
endeavours to keep warm in them:
"To-night I have piled on to my respectable body a flannel waistcoat,
a flannel shirt, and a flannel belt going round three times, a jacket
with sleeves sent by mamma herself, a leather waistcoat from Aunt
Charlotte, a woolen vest which came to me from the unknown mother of a
young dragoon, a warm undercoat recently received from my tailor, and
a woolen jacket and wrap knitted by Madame P. J. So I prepare to sleep
in peace, if the 'Boches' will kindly allow me."
The enemy did not often allow the young gentleman to sleep and about
the windmill the shells were bursting.
They reached one Sunday morning almost as far as the little
twelfth-century church to which the young officer had stepped down from
his windmill to hear Mass in the middle of a crowd of soldiers chanting
the office, recited by a soldier, accompanied by a harmonium played by
another soldier. The windows were shattered, and a beautiful old house
next to the church lay in ruins.
The officer spent lonely hours in the windmill in charge of the
telephone exchange, from which the batteries were worked. The men in
the trenches and the gun-pits pitied his loneliness, and invented a
scheme to cheer him up. So after dark, when the cannonade slackened, he
put the receiver to his ears and listened to a Tyrolese ballad sung by
an orderly, and to the admirable imitation of a barking dog performed
by a sapper, and to a Parisian _chanson_ delightfully rendered by the
aviator.
"Bonne nuit, maman," wrote the officer of artillery at the end of each
letter from his windmill....
There was a little farm near Steinbach round which a battle raged for
many days. Leading to it was a sunken road, defended by the enemy,
until one day they put up a number of non-combatants from captured
villages to prevent a French attack.
"Among them we could distinguish a woman, with her hair falling to
her shoulders and her hands tied behind her back. This new infamy
inflamed the courage of our soldiers. A company rushed forward with
fixed bayonets. The road to the farm was swept by the enemy's fire, but
nothing stopped our men. In spite of our losses we carried the position
and are masters of the farm. There was no mercy in those moments of
triumph. The ghastly business of war was done to the uttermost."
There were ghastly things in some of the enemy's trenches. One of the
worst of them was seen in the forest of Apremont, in the district of
Woevre, where the enemy was strongly intrenched in some quarries quite
close to the French trenches, which sapped their way forward to those
pits. When the guns ceased firing the French soldiers often heard
the sound of singing. But above the voices of the Germans there came
sometimes a series of piercing cries like the screeching of an owl in
a terrible plaint, followed by strange and blood-curdling laughter.
It was the voice of a mad woman who was one of those captured from
neighbouring villages and brought into the trenches by the Germans. One
day the German soldiers carried her the length of their own trenches.
Only her head was visible above the ground. She wore a German helmet
above the wild hair which blew in wisps about her death-white face,
and it seemed like a vision of hell as she passed shrieking with the
laughter of insanity.
V--STORY OF THE PRIEST-SOLDIERS
One turns from such horrors to the heroism of the French soldier, his
devotion to his officers, his letters to that _chère maman_ before whom
his heart is always that of a little child, to the faith which saves
men from at least the grosser brutalities of war....
The priest-soldier in France has been a spiritual influence among his
comrades, so that some of them fought with nobler motives than that of
blood-lust, and went to death or victory, influenced not by hatred of
fellow men, but by a conviction that out of all that death there would
come a new life to nations, and that in killing their enemy they were
killing a brutal tyranny with its grip upon the world, and a barbarism
which would make human life a slavery....
Not a week passed without some priest being cited in the Order of the
Day....
The Abbé Bertrand, vicar of St. Germain de Coulamer, was mobilized
on the outbreak of war, and for his gallantry in the field promoted
successively to the ranks of sergeant, sergeant-major, sub-lieutenant,
and lieutenant. He fell on November 4 at the battle of Audrechy,
leading his men to the assault. A few days before his death he wrote:
"I always look upon this war as an expiation, and I am proud to be a
victim." And again: "Oh, how cold the rain is, and how severe the
weather! For our faith in France I have offered God to let me be wet
and soaked to the very bones."
The story of the Abbé Armand, in the 14th battalion of the Chasseurs
Alpins, is that of a hero. A simple man, he used to open his heart to
his rough comrades, and often in the trenches, under shell-fire, he
would recite the Psalms in a clear voice so that they could hear him.
On November 17, to the south of Ypres, his company was selected to hold
a dangerous position, swept by the heavy guns of the Germans and near
the enemy's trenches. All day until the evening the priest and his
comrades stayed there, raked by a hideous shell-fire. At last nearly
all the men were killed, and on his side of the emplacement the Abbé
Armand was left with two men alive. He signaled the fact to those below
by raising three fingers, but shortly afterwards a bullet struck him
so that he fell and another hit him in the stomach. It was impossible
to send help to him at the time, and he died half an hour later on the
tumulus surrounded by the dead bodies of his comrades. They buried
him up there, and that night his loss was mourned, not without tears,
by many rough soldiers who had loved the man for his cheeriness, and
honoured him for the simple faith, which seemed to put a glamour about
the mudstained uniform of a soldier of France.
There were scores of stories like that, and the army lists contained
the names of hundreds of these priest-soldiers decorated with the
Legion of Honour or mentioned in despatches for gallant acts.
Not all French soldiers are like these priests who were valiant with
the spirit of Christian faith. Side by side with the priest was the
apache, or the slum-dweller, or the peasant from the fields, who in
conversation was habitually and unconsciously foul. Not even the mild
protest of one of these priests could check the flow of richly imagined
blasphemies which are learned in the barracks during the three years'
service, and in the _bistros_ of the back streets of France from
Cherbourg to Marseilles. But, as a rule, the priest did not protest,
except by the example of keeping his own tongue clean. "What is the
use?" said one of them. "That kind of thing is second nature to the men
and, after all, it is part of my sacrifice."
VI--STORY OF GAIETY ON THE ROADS OF FRANCE
Along the roads of France, swinging along to dig a new line of
trenches, or on a march from a divisional headquarters to the front,
the soldiers would begin one of their Rabelaisian songs which have no
ending, but in verse after verse roam further into the purlieus of
indecent mirth, so that, as one French officer told me, "these ballads
used to make the heather blush." After the song would come the great
game of French soldiers on the march. The humourist of the company
would remark upon the fatigued appearance of a _sous-officier_ near
enough to hear.
"He is not in good form to-day, our little corporal. Perhaps it has
something to do with his week-end in Paris!"
Another humourist would take up the cue.
"He has a great thirst, our corporal. His first bottle of wine just
whets his whistle. At the sixth bottle he begins to think of drinking
seriously!"
"He is a great amorist, too, they tell me, and very passionate in his
love-making!"
So the ball is started and goes rolling from one man to another in the
ranks, growing in audacity and wallowing along filthy ways of thought,
until the _sous-officier_, who had been grinning under his _képi_,
suddenly turns red with anger and growls out a protest....
VII--STORY OF THE EVENING OF LIQUID FLAMES
The soldiers of France have learned the full range of human suffering,
so that one cannot grudge them their hours of laughter, however coarse
their mirth. There were many armies of men from Ypres to St. Mihiel who
were put to greater tasks of courage than were demanded of the human
soul in medieval torture chambers, and they passed through the ordeal
with a heroism which belongs to the splendid things of history. As yet
the history has been written only in brief bulletins stating facts
baldly, as when on a Saturday in March of 1915 it was stated that "In
Malancourt Wood, between the Argonne and the Meuse, the enemy sprayed
one of our trenches with burning liquid so that it had to be abandoned.
The occupants were badly burned." That official account does not convey
in any way the horror which overwhelmed the witnesses of the new German
method of attacking trenches by drenching them with inflammatory
liquid. A more detailed narrative of this first attack by liquid fire
was given by one of the soldiers:
"It was yesterday evening, just as night fell, that it happened. The
day had been fairly calm, with the usual quantity of bursting shells
overhead, and nothing forewarned us of a German attack. Suddenly one
of my comrades shouted, 'Hallo! what is this coming down on us? Any
one would think it was petroleum.' At that time we could not believe
the truth, but the liquid which began to spray on us was certainly
some kind of petroleum. The Germans were pumping it from hoses.
Our sub-lieutenant made us put out our pipes. But it was a useless
precaution. A few seconds later incendiary bombs began to rain down on
us and the whole trench burst into flame. It was like being in hell.
Some of the men began to scream terribly, tearing off their clothes,
trying to beat out the flames. Others were cursing and choking in the
hot vapour which stifled us. 'Oh, my Christ!' cried a comrade of mine.
'They've blinded me!' In order to complete their work those German
bandits took advantage of our disturbance by advancing on the trench
and throwing burning torches into it. None of us escaped that torrent
of fire. We had our eyebrows and eyelashes burned off, and clothes were
burned in great patches and our flesh was sizzling like roasting meat.
But some of us shot through the greasy vapour which made a cloud about
us and some of those devils had to pay for their game."
Although some of them had become harmless torches and others lay
charred to death, the trench was not abandoned until the second line
was ready to make a counter attack, which they did with fixed bayonets,
frenzied by the shrieks which still came from the burning pit where
those comrades lay, and flinging themselves with the ferocity of wild
beasts upon the enemy, who fled after leaving three hundred dead and
wounded on the ground.
Along five hundred miles of front such scenes took place week after
week, month after month, from Artois to the Argonne, not always with
inflammatory liquid, but with hand grenades, bombs, stink-shells, fire
balls, smoke balls, and a storm of shrapnel.
VIII--STORY OF THE HAND GRENADIERS
Out of the monotonous narratives of trench-warfare, stories more
horrible than the nightmare phantasies of Edgar Allan Poe, stories
of men buried alive by sapping and mining, and of men torn to bits by
a subterranean explosion which leaves one man alive amidst the litter
of his comrades' limbs so that he goes mad and laughs at the frightful
humour of death, come now and then to reveal the meaning of this modern
warfare which is hidden by censors behind decent veils. It is a French
lieutenant who tells this story, which is heroic as well as horrid:
"We were about to tidy up a captured trench. At the barrier of sand
bags which closed up one end of it, two sentinels kept a sharp lookout
so that we could work in peace of mind. Suddenly from a tunnel, hidden
by a fold in the ground, an avalanche of bombs was hurled over our
heads, and before we could collect our wits ten of our men had fallen
dead and wounded, all hugger-mugger. I opened my mouth to shout a
word of command when a pebble, knocked by a piece of shell, struck
me on the head, and I fell, quite dazed. But my unconsciousness only
lasted a second or two. A bursting shell tore off my left hand and I
was awakened by the pain of it. When I opened my eyes and groaned, I
saw the Germans jump across the sand-bags and invade the trench. There
were twenty of them. They had no rifles, but each man carried a sort
of wicker basket filled with bombs. I looked round to the left. All
our men had fled except those who were lying in their blood. And the
Germans were coming on. Another slip or two and they would have been on
the top of me. At that moment one of my men, wounded in the forehead,
wounded in the chin, and with his face all in a pulp of blood, sat up,
snatched at a bag of hand grenades, and shouted out:
"'Arise, ye dead!'
"He got on his knees, and began to fling his bombs into the crowd of
Germans. At his call, the other wounded men struggled up. Two with
broken legs grasped their rifles and opened fire. The hero with his
left arm hanging limp, grabbed a bayonet. When I stood up, with all
my senses about me now, some of the Germans were wounded and others
were scrambling out of the trench in a panic. But with his back to
the sand-bags stayed a German _Unteroffizier_, enormous, sweating,
apoplectic with rage, who fired two revolver shots in our direction.
The man who had first organized the defense of the trench--the hero of
that 'Arise, ye dead!'--received a shot full in the throat and fell.
But the man who held the bayonet and who had dragged himself from
corpse to corpse, staggered up at four feet from the sand-bags, missed
death from two shots, and plunged his weapon into the German's throat.
The position was saved, and it was as though the dead had really risen."
IX--STORY OF THE FRENCH DRAGOONS
A young Russian officer in the French dragoons told me that he had
been fighting since the beginning of the war with never more than
three hours' sleep a night and often no sleep at all. On many nights
those brief hours of rest were in beetroot fields in which the German
shrapnel had been searching for victims, and he awakened now and then
to listen to the well-known sound of that singing death before dozing
off again.
It was "Boot and saddle" at four o'clock in the morning, before the
dawn. It was cold then--a cold which made men tremble as with an ague.
A cup of black coffee was served, and a piece of bread.
The Russian officer of French dragoons, who has lived in British
colonies, saw a vision then--a false mirage--of a British breakfast. It
was the thought of grilled bloaters, followed by ham and eggs, which
unmanned him for a moment. Ten minutes later the cavalry was moving
away. A detachment was sent forward on a mission of peril, to guard a
bridge. There was a bridge near Béthune one night guarded by a little
patrol. It was only when the last man had been killed that the Germans
made their way across.
Through the darkness these mounted men leaned forward over their
saddles, peering for the enemy, listening for any jangle of stirrup
or clink of bit. On that night there came a whisper from the cavalry
leader.
"They are coming!... Quiet there!"
A file of dark shadows moved forward. The dragoons swung their carbines
forward. There was a volley of shots before the cry rang out.
"Cessez feu! Cessez feu!"
The cry had been heard before from German officers speaking excellent
French, but this time there was no treachery in it. The shadows who
moved forward through the night were Frenchmen changing from one trench
to another.
The risk of death is taken lightly by all these men. It is curious,
indeed, that almost every French soldier has a conviction that he will
die in battle sooner or later. In moments of imagination he sees his
own corpse lying out in the field, and is full of pity for his wife and
children. But it does not destroy his courage or his gift of gaiety or
his desire to fight for France or his sublime endurance of pain.
X--STORY OF THE SINGING ARMY AT AMIENS
It is curious how long the song of La Marseillaise has held its power.
It has been like a leit-motif through all the drama of this war in
France, through the spirit of the French people waiting patiently for
victory, hiding their tears for the dead, consoling their wounded and
their cripples, and giving their youngest and their manhood to the
God of War. What is the magic in this tune so that if one hear it even
on a cheap piano in an auxiliary hospital, or scraped thinly on a
violin in a courtyard of Paris, it thrills one horribly? On the night
of August 2, when I traveled from Paris to Nancy, it seemed to me that
France sang La Marseillaise--the strains of it rose from every wayside
station--and that out of its graveyards across those dark hills and
fields, with a thin luminous line on the far horizon the ghosts of
slain soldiers rose to sing it to those men who were going to fight
again for liberty.
Since then it has always been in my ears. I heard it that night in
Amiens when the French army was in retreat, and when all the young men
of the city, not yet called to the colours because of their youth,
escaped hurriedly on truck trains before a bridge was blown up, so that
if they stayed they would be prisoners in German hands. It was these
boys who sang it, with fresh, clear voices, joining in a fine chorus,
though not far away the soldiers of France were limping through the
night from abandoned positions:
_Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons!..._
I listened to those boys' voices, and something of the history of the
song put its spell upon me then. There was the passion of old heroism
in it, of old and bloody deeds....
Poor devils! Hundreds of them have told me their stories and at the end
of a tale of misery have said: "I do not complain, you know. It's war,
and I am glad to do my duty for the sake of France." And yet sometimes,
when they thought back, to the homes they had left, and their old ways
of civil life, they had moments of weakness in which all the strength
of their souls seemed to ebb away.
"It's fatal to think of one's life before the war," said a young
Frenchman who sat with me at the table of a little café not far from
the front. He was a rich young man, with a great business in Paris
which had been suspended on the first day of mobilization, and with a
pretty young wife who had just had her first baby. Now he was a simple
soldier, and for nine months he had not seen Paris or his home or his
pretty wife. The baby's eyes were gray-blue, it seemed, but he had not
been able to test the truth of that description.
"As a rule," he said, "one doesn't think back to one's old life. A
great gulf lies between us and the past and it is as though one had
been born again just to be a soldier in this war. The roots of our
former existence have been torn up. All one's old interests have been
buried. My wife? I hardly ever think of her. My home? Is there such
a place?... It is only at night, or suddenly, sometimes, as one goes
marching with one's company that one's thoughts begin to roam back
over old grounds for a moment or two. The other fellows know what
one's silence means, and one's deafness, so that one doesn't hear
a neighbour's joke or answer his question. It gives one a horrible
heartache and one is overwhelmed with depression.... Great God, how
long is this war going to last?"
(This brilliant young English author continues to relate the scenes his
eyes have witnessed with the skill of the master. His description of
Paris during the siege is a literary masterpiece.--EDITOR.)
FOOTNOTE:
[5] All numerals relate to stories told herein, not to chapters in the
book.
"TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI"--IN THE LAND OF THE TURKS
_Adventures of a Newfoundlander_
_Told by John Gallishaw, Member of the First Newfoundland Regiment_
This is the personal narrative of a loyal Newfoundlander soldiering
in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign. This is an adventurous
story stranger than fiction; as well as a reliable account by an
unusually keen participant of the gigantic failure at Gallipoli. Mr.
Gallishaw was a student at Harvard when the War began and he gives
an extraordinarily vivid impression of trench fighting and trench
living. He tells how seven weeks after the outbreak of the War, the
Newfoundlanders joined the flotilla containing the first contingent
of Canadians. He was on garrison duty for a time at Edinburgh
Castle in Scotland and then sent to Egypt. His book: "Trenching in
Gallipoli" is published by the _Century Company_, Copyright 1916,
with whose permission the following stories are taken.
[6] I--STORY OF A HARVARD STUDENT IN TURKEY
The afternoon sun poured down steadily on little groups of men
preparing dugouts for habitation (at Gallipoli). I had a good many
details to attend to before I could look about for a suitable place for
a dugout. Men had to be told off for different fatigues. Men for pick
and shovel work that night were placed in sections so that each group
would get as much sleep as possible. All the available dugouts had been
taken up by the first comers....
After much hunting, I found a likely looking place. It was about seven
feet square, and where I planned to put the head of my dugout a large
boulder squatted. It was so eminently suitable that I wondered that no
one else had preëmpted it. I took off my equipment, threw my coat on
the ground, and began digging. It was soft ground and gave easily.
A short distance away, I could see Art Pratt, digging. He was finding
it hard work to make any impression. He saw me, stopped to mop his
brow, and grinned cheerfully.
"You should take soft ground like this, Art," I yelled.
"I've gone so far now," said Art, "that it's too late to change," and
we resumed our work.
After a few more minutes' digging, my pick struck something that
felt like the root of a tree, but I knew there was no tree on that
God-forsaken spot large enough to send out big roots. I disentangled
the pick and dug a little more, only to find the same obstruction. I
took my small intrenching tool, scraped away the dirt I had dug, and
began cleaning away near the base of a big boulder. There were no roots
there, and gradually I worked away from it. I took my pick again, and
at the first blow it stuck. Without trying to disengage it I began
straining at it. In a few seconds it began to give, and I withdrew it.
Clinging to it was a part of a Turkish uniform, from which dangled and
rattled the dried-up bones of a skeleton. Nauseated, I hurriedly filled
in the place, and threw myself on the ground, physically sick. While
I was lying there one of our men came along, searching for a place to
bestow himself. He gazed inquiringly at the ground I had just filled in.
"Is there anybody here?" he asked me, indicating the place with a
pick-ax.
"Yes," I said, with feeling, "there is."
"It looks to me," he said, "as if some one began digging and then found
a better place. If he don't come back soon I'll take it."
For about fifteen minutes he stood there, and I lay regarding him
silently. At last he spoke again.
"I think I'll go ahead," he said. "Possession is nine points of the
law, and the fellow hasn't been here to claim it."
"I wouldn't if I were you," I said. "That fellow's been there a hell of
a long while."
I left him there digging, and crawled away to a safe distance. In a few
minutes he passed me.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, reproachfully.
"Because half of the company saw me digging there and didn't tell me,"
I said.
I was prospecting around for another place when Art Pratt hailed me.
"Why don't you come with me," he said, "instead of digging another
place?"
I went to where he was and looked at the dugout. It wasn't very wide,
and I said so. Together we began widening and deepening the dugout,
until it was big enough for the two of us. It was grueling work, but
by supper time it was done. The night before, a fatigue party had gone
down to the beach and hauled up a big field kitchen. Our cooks had made
some tea, and we had been issued some loaves of bread. Art unrolled a
large piece of cloth with all the pomp and ceremony of a man unveiling
a monument. He did it slowly and carefully. There was a glitter in his
eyes that one associates with an artist exhibiting his masterpiece. He
gave a triumphant switch to the last fold and held toward me a large
piece of fresh juicy steak.
"Beefsteak!" I gasped. "Sacred beefsteak! Where did you get it?"
Art leaned toward me mysteriously. "Officers' mess," he whispered.
"I've got salt and pepper," I said, "but how are you going to cook it?"
"I don't know," said Art, "but I'm going up to the field kitchen;
there's some condensed milk that I may be able to get hold of to spread
on our bread."
II--STORY OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS
While Art was gone, I strolled down the ravine a little way to where
some of the Royal Engineers were quartered. The Royal Engineers are the
men who are looked on in training as a non-combatant force, with safe
jobs. In war-time they do no fighting, but their safe jobs consist of
such harmless work as fixing up barbed wire in front of the parapet and
setting mines under the enemy's trenches. For a rest they are allowed
to conduct parties to listening posts and to give the lines for advance
saps. Sometimes they make loopholes in the parapet, or bolster up some
redoubt that is being shelled to pieces.
The Turks were sending over their compliments just as I came abreast
of the Engineers' lines. One of the engineers was sifting some gravel
when the first shell landed. He dropped the sieve, and turned a back
somersault into some gorse-bushes just behind him. The sieve rolled
down, swayed from side to side, and settled close to my head, in the
depression where I was conscientiously emulating an ostrich. I gathered
it to my bosom tenderly and began crawling away. From behind a boulder
I heard the engineer bemoaning to an officer the loss of his sieve, and
he described in detail how a huge shell had blown it out of his hands.
Joyfully I returned to Art with my prize.
"What's that for?" said Art.
"Turn it upside down," I said, "and it's a steak broiler."
"Where did you get it?" said Art.
I told him, and related how the engineer had explained it to his
officer.
Up at the field kitchen a group was standing around.
"What's the excitement?" I asked Art.
"Those fellows are a crowd of thieves," answered Art, virtuously.
"They're looking about to see what they can steal. I was up there a few
minutes ago and saw a can of condensed milk lying on the shaft of the
field kitchen. They were watching me too closely to give me a chance,
but you might be able to get away with it."
The two of us strolled up slowly to where Hebe Wheeler, the creative
artist who did our cooking, was holding forth to a critical audience.
"It's all very well to talk about giving you things to eat, but I
can't cook pancakes without baking powder. You can't get blood out of
a turnip. I'd give you the stuff if I got it to cook, but I don't get
it, do I, Corporal?" said Hebe, appealing to me.
I moved over and stood with my back to the shaft on which rested the
tin of condensed milk.
"No, Hebe," I said, "you don't get the things; and when you do get
them, this crowd steals them on you."
"By God," said Hebe, "that's got to be put a stop to. I'll report the
next man I find stealing anything from the cookhouse."
I put my hand cautiously behind my back, until I felt my fingers close
on the tin of milk. "You let me know, Hebe," I said, as I slipped the
tin into the roomy pocket of my riding breeches, "and I'll make out
a crime sheet against the first man whose name you give." I stayed
about ten minutes longer talking to Hebe, and then returned to my
dugout. Art had finished broiling the piece of steak, and we began our
supper. I put my hand in my breeches' pocket to get the milk. Instead
of grasping the tin, my fingers closed on a sticky, gluey mass. The tin
had been opened when I took it and I had it in my pocket upside down.
About half of it had oozed over my pocket. Art was just pouring the
remainder on some bread when some one lifted the rubber sheet and stuck
his head into our dugout. It was the enraged Hebe Wheeler. As soon as
he had missed his precious milk he had made a thorough investigation of
all the dugouts. He looked at Art accusingly.
"Come in, Hebe," I said pleasantly. "We don't see you very often."
Hebe paid no attention to my invitation, but glared at Art.
"I've caught you with the goods on," he said. "Give me back that milk,
or I'll report you to the platoon officer."
"You can report me to Lord Kitchener if you like," said Art, calmly, as
he drained the can; "but this milk stays right here."
Hebe disappeared, breathing vengeance.
III--STORY OF A NIGHT IN THE DUG-OUTS
After supper that night a crowd sat around the dying embers of the
fires. This was one of the first positions we had been in where there
was cover sufficient to warrant fires being lighted. A mail had been
distributed that day, and the men exchanged items of news and swapped
gossip. There were men there from all parts of Newfoundland. They spoke
in at least thirty different accents....
Sometimes a friend of the absent "Half" would tell of Half's exploit
of stealing a trolley from the Reid Newfoundland Company and going
twenty miles to see a girl. Sometimes the hero was a married man. Then
it was opined that his conjugal relations were not happy, and the
reason he enlisted was that "he had heard something."... The lumbermen
of Notre Dame Bay and Green Bay told fearsome and wondrous tales of
driving and swamping, of teaming and landing, until one almost heard
the blows of ax, the "gee" and "haw" of the teamsters, and smelt the
pungent odor of new-cut pine. The Reid Newfoundland Railway, the single
narrow gauge road that twists a picturesque trail across the Island,
had given largely of its personnel toward the making of the regiment.
Firemen and engineers, brakemen and conductors, talked reminiscently of
forced runs to catch expresses with freight and accommodation trains.
There is an interesting tale of two drivers who blew their whistles
in the Morse code, and kept up communication with each other, until a
girl learned the code and broke up the friendship. A steamship fireman
contributed his quota with a story of laboring through mountainous seas
against furious tides when the stokers' utmost efforts served only
to keep steamers from losing way. By comparison with the homeland,
Turkey suffered much; and the things they said about Gallipoli were
lamentable. From the gloom on the other side of the fire a voice
chanted softly, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, It's a long way
to go." Gradually all joined in. After Tipperary, came many marching
songs. "Are we downhearted? NO," with every one booming out the "No."
"Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue," and at last their own song; to the tune
of "There is a tavern in the town."
And when those Newfoundlanders start to yell, start to yell.
Oh, Kaiser Bill, you'll wish you were in hell, were in hell;
For they'll hang you high to your Potsdam palace wall,
You're a damn poor Kaiser, after all.
The singing died down slowly. The talk turned to the trenches and the
chances of victory, and by degrees to personal impressions.
"I'd like to know," said one chap, "why we all enlisted."
"When I enlisted," said a man with an accent reminiscent of the
Placentia Bay, "I thought there'd be lots of fun, but with weather like
this, and nothing fit to eat, there's not much poetry or romance in war
any more."
"Right for you, my son," said another; "your King and Country need you,
but the trouble is to make your King and Country feed you."
"Don't you wish you were in London now, Gal?" said one chap, turning
to me. "You'd have a nice bed to sleep in, and could eat anywhere you
liked."
"Well," I said, "enough people tried to persuade me to stop. One fellow
told me that the more brains a man had, the farther away he was from
the firing-line. He'd been to the front too. I think," I added, "that
General Sherman had the right idea."
"I wish you fellows would shut up and go to sleep," said a querulous
voice from a nearby dugout.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Gal; General Sherman was an
optimist."
"It doesn't do any good to talk about it now," said Art Pratt, in a
matter of fact voice. "Some of you enlisted so full of love of country
that there was patriotism running down your chin, and some of you
enlisted because you were disappointed in love, but the most of you
enlisted for love of adventure, and you're getting it."
Again the querulous subterranean voice interrupted: "Go to sleep,
you fellows--there's none of you knows what you're talking about.
There's only one reason any of us enlisted, and that's pure, low down,
unmitigated ignorance." Amid general laughter the class in applied
psychology broke up, and distributed themselves in their various
dugouts.
Halfway down to my dugout, I was arrested by the sound of scuffling,
much blowing and puffing, and finally the satisfied grunt that I knew
proceeded from Hebe Wheeler.
"I've got a spy," he yelled. "Here's a bloody Turk."
"Turk nothing," said a disgusted voice. "Don't you know a man from your
own company?"
Hebe relinquished his hold on his captive and subsided, grumbling. The
other arose, shook himself, and went his way, voicing his opinion of
people who built their dugouts flush with the ground.
"What do you think of the news from the Western front?" said Art, when
I located him.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The enemy are on the run at the Western front. The British have taken
four lines of German trenches for a distance of over five miles in the
vicinity of Loos. The bulletin board at Brigade headquarters says that
they have captured several large guns, a number of machine guns, and
seventeen thousand unwounded prisoners. If they can keep this up long
enough for the Turks to realize that it is hopeless to expect any help
from that quarter, Abdul Pasha will soon give in."
IV--STORY OF THE BOMB-THROWING AUSTRALIANS
We were talking about Abdul Pasha's surrendering when we dropped off
to sleep. We must have been asleep about two hours when the insistent,
crackling sound of rapid fire, momentarily increasing in volume,
brought us to our feet. Away up on the right, where the Australians
were, the sky was a red glare from the flashing of many rifles.
Against this, we could see the occasional flare of different coloured
rockets that gave the warships their signals for shelling. Very soon
one of our officers appeared.
"Stand to arms for the Newfoundlanders," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The Australians are advancing," he answered. "We'll go up as
reinforcements if we're needed. Tell your men to put on their
ammunition belts, and have their rifles ready. They needn't put on
their packs; but keep them near them so that they can slip them on if
we get the order to move away."
I went about among the men of my section, passing along the word.
Everybody was tingling with excitement. Nobody knew just what was about
to happen; but every one thought that whatever it was it would prove
interesting. For about half an hour the rapid fire kept up, then by
degrees died down.
"Did you see that last rocket?" said a man near me; "that means they've
done it. A red rocket means that the navy is to fire, a green to
continue firing, and a white one means that we've won."
In a few minutes Mr. Nunns walked toward us. "You can put your
equipments off, and turn in again," he said, "nothing doing to-night."
"What is all the excitement?" I asked.
"Oh, it's the Anzacs again," he said; "when they heard of the advance
at Loos, they went over across, and surprised the Turks. They've taken
two lines of trenches. They did it without any orders--just wanted to
celebrate the good news."
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a whizz-bang flying
over our dugout. Johnny Turk was sending us his best respects. I shook
Art, who was sleeping heavily.
"Get up, Art," I said. I might as well have spoken to a stone wall. I
tried again. Putting my mouth to his ear, I shouted, "Stand to, Art.
Stand to."
Art turned over, sleeping. "I'll stand three if you like, but don't
disturb me," he muttered, and relapsed into coma.
In a few minutes, two or three more shells came along. They were well
over the ridge behind us, but were landing almost in the midst of
another line of dugouts. I stood gazing at them for a little while., A
man passed me running badly. "Come on," he gasped, "and yell for the
stretcher." I followed him without further question. "It's all right,"
he said, slowing up just before we came to the line of dugouts that had
just been shelled. "They've got him all right." We continued toward a
group that was crowded about a stretcher. A man was lying on it, with
his head raised on a haversack. He rolled his eyes slowly and surveyed
the group. "What the hell is the matter?" he said dazedly; then felt
himself over gingerly for wounds. Apparently he could find none. "What
hit me?" he asked, appealing to a grinning Red Cross man.
"Nothing," said the other, "except about a ton of earth. It's a lucky
thing some one saw you. That last shell buried you alive."
The whistle of a coming shell dispersed the grinning spectators. I went
back to my dugout, and found Art busily toasting some bread over the
sieve that I had commandeered the day before.
"What was the excitement?" he asked.
"Charlie Renouf," I said, "was buried alive."
"Heavens," said Art, "he's the postman; we can't afford to lose him.
That reminds me that I've got to write some letters."
While we were writing, the orderly sergeant, that dread of loafers,
who appoints all details for fatigue work, bore down upon our dugout.
"Two men from you, Corporal Gallishaw," he said, "for bomb throwers.
Give me their names as soon as you can. They're for practice this
afternoon."
"One here, right away," said Art, "and put Lew O'Dea down for the
other."
Lew O'Dea was a character. He was in the next dugout to me. The first
day on the Peninsula, his rifle had stuck full of sand, and some one
had stolen his tin canteen for cooking food. He immediately formed
himself into an anti-poverty society of one thereafter, and went around
like a walking arsenal. I never saw him with fewer than three rifles,
usually he carried half a dozen. He always kept two or three of them
spotlessly clean; so that no matter when rifle inspection came, he
always had at least one to show. He had been a little late in getting
his rifle clean once and was determined not to be caught any more. His
equipment always contained a varied assortment of canteens, seven or
eight gas masks, and his dugout was luxurious with rubber sheets and
blankets. "I inherited them," he always answered, whenever anybody
questioned him about them. With ammunition for his several rifles, when
he started for the trenches in full marching order, he carried a load
that a mule need by no means have been ashamed of.
"Do you want to go on bomb throwing detail this afternoon?" I called to
O'Dea across the top of the dugout.
"Sure," he answered; "does a duck want to swim?"
"Fine," I said; "report here at two o'clock."
At two o'clock, accompanied by an officer and a sergeant, we went
down the road a little way to where some Australians were conducting
a class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap from Sydney showed me
the difference between bombs that you explode by lighting a match,
and bombs that are started by pulling out a plug, and the dinky little
three-second "cricket balls" that explode by pressing a spring. I asked
him about the attack the night before. He told me that they had been
for some time waiting for a chance to make a local advance and that
would capture an important redoubt in the Turkish line. Every night at
exactly nine o'clock, the Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part
of the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For ten minutes they kept
up heavy firing. Then, after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and
suspended firing, they began a second illumination and bombardment,
commencing always at twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely
at half past. After a little while, the enemy, knowing just the exact
minute the bombardment was to begin, took the first beam of the
searchlight as a hint to clear out. But the night before, a crowd of
eager Australians had crept softly along in the shadow made doubly dark
by the glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance covered by
the sound of the bombardment. As soon as the bombardment ceased and
the searchlight's beam was succeeded by darkness, they poured into the
Turkish position. They had taken the astonished Turks completely by
surprise.
"We didn't expect to make the attack for another week," said the
Australian; "but as soon as our boys heard that we were winning in
France, they thought they'd better start something. There hasn't been
any excitement over our way now for a long time," he said. "I'm about
fed up on this waiting around the trenches." He fingered one of the
little cricket-ball bombs caressingly. "Think of it," he said; "all
you do is press that little spring, and three seconds after you're a
casualty."
"Pressing the little spring," said I, "is my idea of nothing to do,
unless you're a particularly fast sprinter."
"By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said the Australian, with a
peculiar, excited glint in his eye, "that's an inspiration."
"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewilderment.
The Australian stretched himself on the ground beside me, resting his
chin in his cupped hands. "When I was in Sydney," he said slowly and
thoughtfully, "I did a hundred yards in ten seconds easily. Now if I
can get in a traverse that's only eight or nine yards long, and press
the spring of one of those little cricket balls, I ought to be able to
get out on the other side of the traverse before it explodes."
Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and I jumped up to go with
them. "Don't forget to look for me if you're over around the Fifteenth
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for White George."
"I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to join the others.
We were about half way to our dugouts when we passed a string of our
men carrying about twenty mail bags. It was the second instalment of
a lot of mail that had been landed the day before. We followed the
sweating carriers up the road to the quarter-master sergeant's dugout,
and waited around humbly while that autocrat leisurely sorted out the
mail, making remarks about each letter and waiting after each remark
for the applause he felt it deserved. With maddening deliberation he
scanned each address. "Corporal W. P. Costello." "He's at the base,"
some one answered. Corporal Costello's letter was put aside. "Private
George Butler." Private Butler, on the edge of the crowd, pushed and
elbowed his way toward the quarter-master sergeant. "Here you are;
letter for Butler."
I received one letter, and was sitting on the edge of my dugout
reading it when one of our men passing along, yelled to me. "Hey," he
said, "you come from the United States, don't you?"
"Yes," I said; "what do you want to know that for?"
"I've got something here," he said, stopping, "that comes from there
too." He dived into his pocket, and produced a medley of articles. From
these he selected a small paper-wrapped parcel.
"What's that?" I said.
"It's chewing gum," he answered; "real American chewing gum like the
girls chew in the subway in New York." He unwrapped it, selected a
piece, placed it in his mouth, and began chewing it with elaborated
enjoyment. After a few minutes, he came nearer. "By golly," he said,
with an exaggerated nasal drawl, "it's good gum, I'll soon begin to
feel like a blooming Yank. I'm talking like a Yank already. Don't you
wish you had some of this?"
"I'll make you a sporting offer," I answered. "I'll fight you for the
rest of what you've got."
"No, you won't," he answered nasally; "it's made me feel exactly like
a Yank; I'm too proud to fight."
(This Newfoundland soldier-boy here tells about his experiences in
"No Man's Land"; his fights with the Turks; how he was wounded and
sent his last message "home"; how he finally recovered and returned to
America.--EDITOR.)
FOOTNOTE:
[6] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the
book.
SCENES "IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL"
_Stories of a Nurse_
_By M. Eydoux-Demians--Translated by Betty Yeomans_
This is a wonderful revelation of the soul of France. It gives
"impressions of things actually seen and heard, revealing the
wonderful courage and emotion that exists to-day in a French
provincial hospital." These notes have been collected in a volume
dedicated: "To My Five Brothers Wounded in the Service of France."
These touching and inspiring stories of the wounded and nurses in a
French hospital and told with a dramatic and literary power which
make them little masterpieces. They form a most realistic picture of
the human side of the Great War. The selections herein given are from
the hundreds of thrilling anecdotes in the book, by courtesy of the
publishers, _Duffield and Company_: Copyrighted 1915.
[7] I--STORIES OF THE WOUNDED ON THEIR BEDS
On October sixth, (1914) last, I received a message from the directress
of the Hospital of Saint Dominic, reading as follows:
"A large number of wounded have just arrived. We can't take care of any
more ourselves, and the moment has come to call for volunteers. I shall
expect your help."
One hour later, as you can easily imagine, I was at Saint Dominic.
This specially privileged hospital is under the gentle management of
the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. Several years ago some of its
devoted trustees made one effort after another on its behalf in Paris,
and, after overcoming many difficulties, reëstablished the Sisters of
Charity amongst us once again. They had not a doubt even then that they
were working in the interests of France's soldiers, those same soldiers
whose faces light up now with such a special joy when they lie on their
painful stretchers, and catch sight, near the large entrance porch, of
the good white cornettes of the Sisters waiting for them.
With my heart beating fast I entered the room to which I had been
assigned. There they all were before me, these lads that had undergone
that terrible and fierce adventuring into war. I remember how they
went away in our wonderful mobilisation trains, those makeshift,
flower-bedecked trains that sped all of them to the same destination,
the same region of glory and bloodshed. One long war cry seemed to rise
up from them over all our land. Our young soldiers who went away in
them had acquired an entirely new way of shouting "_Vive la France_."
It was no longer as if they were on parade, notwithstanding all the
flowers that people tossed to them: it was already the cry of men who
were to lead in war's assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of their
lives. I remember one little infantryman of twenty years, standing
erect with folded arms in the back of his compartment, his eyes
flashing, and all the muscles of his pale face taut. He kept repeating
threateningly, "_Vive la France--vive la France_," without a look
toward any one; saying it just to himself and for his country. And I
felt that it was as if he said: "We shall get them: we must get them,
no matter what it costs. As for me, well, you see, to begin with, my
life doesn't count any more." This very fellow is the one, perhaps, who
has come back now and sleeps here in this first cot, where a face both
energetic and infantile shows in the midst of the blood-stained linen.
Sister Gabrielle made a tour with me of all the patients. The memory of
certain of them particularly is fixed in my mind. There is number 3,
here, who got a bullet wound in the region of the liver, and has to lie
absolutely still, lest an internal hemorrhage may occur at any moment.
A warrior of twenty-three he is, with cheeks as rosy as a girl's, and
clear blue eyes. He fought like a lion, they say, but here nothing
could be gentler. His appreciation for the least thing that is done for
him is touching. Number 8, little eight, as they call him, a volunteer,
who seems about fifteen, and who has to live week after week propped
on his right side, on a hard hospital bed, on account of an abscess
following his wound. Number 12, an infantryman, who got a bullet in the
left temple; it was extracted from his right maxillary, and in passing
cut his tongue in two. "Everything has been put back," said the Sister,
"but he can't talk yet, and he'll have to learn to talk all over again,
like a little child. In taking care of him you must come every once in
a while and see if you can guess what he wants." Number 17, a brave
among the braves, who, under the enemy's fire, crawled ten kilometres
on his hands and knees, dragging his twice-wounded foot behind him,
to deliver an order that he had been charged with. His wounds cause
him cruel suffering, and yet he seems illuminated as with some strange
inward joy. Number 24, nicknamed the little sieve, because of his
fifteen wounds. Number 32, who suffers like a real martyr. His leg was
literally shattered by the fragments of a shell. It was a question
whether it could be saved at all, but following the directions of the
war surgeon, we are keeping up the attempt. Antiseptic injections are
made twice a day as deep as the bone. Number 30, who has lost an eye
and has two open fractures in his right arm. When I said to him: "You
have given a good deal for France," he answered, "It's the least I
could do." And he added, laughing, "I was so clumsy with my hands. This
will teach me to be clever even with my left one."...
One cannot repeat too often or too admiringly, "Our wounded." Our
wounded, that is to say, those men who have come back from that hell,
"whose horrors," they say themselves, "are indescribable;" those who
have marched beneath "that terrible, moving curtain of iron," to which
an officer compared the mass of balls and shells in battle, a mass so
compact that it obscured the very daylight on the firing line. Our
wounded! Those, in a word, who have brought back in their very flesh
the frightful scars of the enemy's iron, those who have cemented with
their own blood the human wall that is now our frontier. They have come
back, not with their courage drained, broken down, horror-stricken,
stunned--not at all. They forget themselves to talk smilingly of the
great hope in which we all share. They are touched, deeply touched, by
the few hours of fatigue we undergo for them each day--for them who
have given almost their lives.
My tasks were laid out for me, and I began work at once, thanked by the
soldiers almost in advance for my trouble.
"It's a bit too much to see you work like this for us."
"All the same, no one has ever been served like this."
They are not a bit difficult, but pleased with everything, these men
who suffer so much, who have such a right to every care. Alas, there
are too many of them (this hospital alone has as many as a thousand) to
permit of all the little comforting things that we should like to do
for them without stint. The Sister who cooks is sorely driven, and even
the prescribed dishes that she sends up for the sickest ones are often
far from appetizing. For instance, I have just taken Number 13, who is
consumed by a lingering fever (a bullet passed through his lung), a
milk soup that smelt badly burned, and in which pieces of half-cooked
rice floated round. I sighed a little about it as I put the napkin
on the bed. Did he understand what worried me? In any case, he shows
no distaste, and a quarter of an hour later, when I pass by him, he
motions to me, and says gently, "It was delicious, madame."
That's the way they all are--all of them.
II--STORY OF SISTER GABRIELLE--"ARCHANGEL"
I study with emotion the admirable vision of the human soul which the
Sister of Charity and the wounded soldier set before me. It is a vision
which has intervened always, as with an element of the supernatural,
in our war-time pictures, and, behold, now we find it again, almost
miraculously, in the supreme struggle of 1914.
Sister Gabrielle, who has charge of my room, her identity quite hidden
as it is by her archangel's name, is the daughter of a general, as I
know. She has three brothers that have served beneath the colours. The
oldest, a quite young captain, has just met his death on the field
of honour. I happen to have learned the circumstances: how, covered
with blood already flowing from three different wounds, Captain X
nevertheless struggled on bravely at the head of his men, and after
several hours of conflict was struck by a bullet full in the breast.
He fell, crying: "Don't fall back! That's my last order!"
Sister Gabrielle was told only last week of the glorious grief that
had been thrust upon her, but no one around her would have guessed her
sorrow. Possibly her smile for the patients that day was a little more
compassionate and tender than usual, when she thought of her brother
enduring his moment of supreme agony alone down there in the forests of
the Vosges....
She is thin and frail--mortally ill herself, they say; she was quite
ill one month ago. But if you speak to her of her health she interrupts
you a little impatiently:
"We have given ourselves, body and soul, according to our vows. To last
a little longer or a little less doesn't matter. The main thing is to
fulfill our tasks. Besides," she adds, indicating her patients, "they
have given their lives for France. It is quite right, if it must be so,
that our lives be sacrificed to save them."...
In the lot of wounded that were sent in yesterday, forty came to Sister
Gabrielle directly from the Aisne. They arrived toward the close of the
day, and I shall never forget the spectacle of that room. One stretcher
succeeded another, all borne slowly by the litter-men and set down near
the hastily prepared beds. Here and there you caught a cry of pain that
could not be kept in, though there were no complaints, no continued
groanings. Yet now, when you lean over those glorious and lamentable
blue bonnets, cut as they are by bullets and stained with the mud of
the trenches, when you take off the caps that have grown stiff with
the dampness of the long rains, you perceive their suffering by the
glittering look in their fevered eyes, their poor, worn faces and
ravaged features, sunken and hollow with suffering. Then, all at once,
at the least word, the old gallantry that we know so well reasserts
itself. For example, they ask the most touching and childish favours of
us. Thus if a limb that hurts too much must be lifted, or a piece of
clothing that binds a wound eased up, they all ask:
"Not the orderly, not the orderly, please! the Sister or the lady."
The first words that the newcomers exchange with their cot neighbours
are not about their own hardships; they speak first, and before
anything else, of France.
"How are things going down there?"
"All right. We'll get them."
Then the newcomers, worn out as they are, sink into feverish sleep,
struggling sometimes for days between realities and the persistent
nightmare of the visions that pursue them. That night in the room that
was always so still, but that now seemed more feverish than usual, I
heard a sound of smothered sobs. It was Number 25, a big, good-looking
soldier, whom each day I had seen having his wound dressed, a real
torture, without a word, and who was sobbing now with his head in his
pillow, ashamed of his tears, but powerless to keep them back. I went
to him and tried to question him, but the soldiers don't readily speak
to you of the sorrows that touch their hearts the deepest and most
nearly.
"Thank you, lady; don't bother yourself about me. I don't need
anything."
"Is your pain worse, maybe?"
"I'm in pain, yes, terribly, but it isn't that."
"What is it, then? Won't you tell me?"
He denied me still, then, all at once, under the pressure of his grief,
he said:
"Oh, yes, I do feel like confiding in you. I'll tell you what it is.
The comrade who was waiting next to me till his bed was ready brought
me news of the death of my best friend. He was in his regiment and was
killed by his side. Oh, madame, he was such a fine fellow, so devoted
and full of courage. We were brought up together. He was more than my
chum; he was my friend."
He cried and cried. He had borne everything without giving way--the
continual nearness of death, the so hard life in the trenches, the
incessant physical suffering; but the death of his friend crushed him
and brought him down to earth. And while I murmured words that, alas,
were futile for any change they made in his sorrow, but which did some
good, just the same, I heard him sobbing in his pillow:
"My friend was killed. My friend was killed."
His friend--when one knows what the word _comrade_ means to them, one
divines all that word friend may mean, too.
Sister Gabrielle, whose infallible instinct brings her always to the
cots where the sickest of her children are, passed near Number 25 and
stopped a moment. She did not ask him anything. She just put her hand
caressingly on his brown head, so young and virile, and said in her
firm, sweet voice:
"All right, my boy, all right. Courage. Remember all this is for
France."
Then turning to me, she said:
"Before night-time wouldn't you like to play a game of dominoes with
this good boy? He'll represent the French forces, and in the morning he
must be able to tell me that he has won."
In the midst of his tears the young soldier, his heart swelling in his
distress, smiled at finding himself thus treated like a child. They
have such need of it, the soldiers, after having done so valiantly the
work of men!
III--STORIES OF THE SOLDIERS FROM THE AISNE
It is comforting to hear them talk about their superior officers, as a
soldier of the 149th Infantry has just talked to me about his captain.
"Oh, I can tell you, my captain had plenty of good blood in his veins.
There was nothing suspicious about him. I saw him standing straight
up among the whistling bullets, giving his orders without flinching,
without recoiling one inch, as if he were sitting at his desk and only
flies were buzzing round his head. And so gentle, too. Good to the men
and always jolly. We were in luck to have him over us."
I asked him questions about his campaign, and he talked freely, having
only good things to tell. The taciturn ones are those who have sad
memories to conceal.
"We were the ones told off to take the village of S----," he said,
"where the enemy was. My captain, who acted as chief of battalion, got
us all together, and said to us:
"'There seem to be two or three Boches down there. We must get them
out, eh?'
"Everybody knew very well what that meant, but we laughed and went to
it in good part. What fights those were! Two days of bloody battles in
the streets. Finally the village was ours. We had one night's rest in
a farmhouse, three-quarters of which had been destroyed. When we got
there we spied an unfortunate porker in a corner. He had taken refuge
there, frightened by the firing. He came in very handy, I can tell you,
for our stomachs were hollow.
"'Charge again on that Boche, there,' said the Captain. When he had
eaten and slept and assembled again next day, he said:
"Well, well, my lads, we're in danger of getting too soft here. Suppose
we go on a little further and see what's happening.'
"We marched on further, but the enemy, who were in force, began to
shoot at us all at once from below. My Captain didn't expose us
needlessly. He made us lie down in the deserted trenches. There were
corpses there and dead horses, and water, water everywhere. It rained
without stopping. We spent the night up to our waists in water. It was
enough to make one laugh."
To laugh--this word turns up all the time in their recitals, and in the
most unexpected manner. Oh, this French courage, which faces not only
the bitter struggle with danger, but disdains and mocks it, too; that
elegant courage of our fathers that has been born again amongst us.
My foot-soldier, Number 149, was seized with quite a touching emotion
when I told him that I knew his Captain's lady.
"Tell her she may be proud," he said, "and that I'd willingly go back
down there; for my country's sake, of course, but also and a good deal,
on my Captain's account."
Then I let him know something that I'd kept till the end of our
interview, that his Captain, young as he was, had just been promoted to
the rank of battalion chief; that the Cross of the Legion of Honour had
been given him, and that, thanks to him, no doubt, the entire regiment
had been mentioned in the order of the day. I won't attempt to picture
the little soldier's moving and disinterested joy.
Near Number 3's bed I caught sight of a peasant woman from the Cher, in
a white head-dress, and an old man, who wore a medallion of 1870 on his
breast.
"They are his parents," Sister Gabrielle explained to me. "I had word
sent to them. The poor lad is in grave danger. Luckily I've got the
management's permission to let the mother pass the nights here."
In this way I became acquainted with the Mèchins, French peasants
of the old order, unalterably attached to the soil. They hope, nay,
they are sure, that their son is going to get well. The sick man says
nothing. They're all like that, our soldiers--no foolish tenderness,
no pain given to their parents. Who knows, besides, how much their
desire to
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/49099